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Think of this film as a Saturday morning live-action program from ages ago. Even the small tykes will find this one hard to please because it runs like molasses! I can't fully understand how god awful it is to make something too typical and uninteresting, especially in the costume department! Too many warrior-wizard movies out there have used the same old plotline numerous times over, but this is mighty scarce considering its appeal to the little darlings. And who in the world would've let a topless mermaid be cast in the first place? I thought this was a "family" movie! MST3K, here's another fine gem for your 1999 TV season!
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Negative
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Title: Robot Jox (1990) <br /><br />Director: Stuart Gordon <br /><br />Cast: Gary Graham, Anne Marie Johnson, Paul Koslo <br /><br />Review: Stuart Gordon who we usually associate with extremely gory horror films such as Re-Animator, From Beyond, Dagon and Castle Freak, took a small detour here and did a little sci-fi flick. I stress the word "little" since this is a very low budget flick, and there in lies its main weakness.<br /><br />The story takes place in the future. A world in which the great superpowers (that according to this movie are the United States and Russia) duke out their differences not by going on a full blown world war...but by fighting gladiator style battles with gigantic robots. Our hero Achilles must go up against the evil Russian robot fighter called Alexander. Lots of cheap stop motion animation ensues.<br /><br />Well, the idea is awesome I guess. The great nations settleling territorial disputes with giant robots? Interesting premise and one that could have been handled properly if the proper budget had been available. Unfortunately what could have been a fun movie ends up being an embarrassment for an otherwise great director.<br /><br />I as a kid loved this movie, and I guess if you want any enjoyment out of this movie, you'll have to revert back to little kid mode to have some fun with it. I showed this film to some of my friends and as the movie progressed my friends where like "what the hell is this piece of crap franco?" And I'm like well this movie is a sci-fi by one of my favorite directors Stuart Gordon?" But as the movie progressed into corny territory I almost felt like pressing stop and not having them go through that torture. I could go through it, cause I loved this film as a kid, and there's still a little nostalgia attached to watching it. But everyone else was just not going to get it.<br /><br />And I myself realized that the movie isn't really that good. First off. The movie is about giant robots kicking the hell out of each other. And in order to achieve this in a credible fashion you'd have to use some damn good special effects to make it work, expensive effects that would help us the audience suspend disbelief. But unfortunately this being a small scale movie, from a small scale company (Empire Pictures, which went bankrupt after making this film!)the effects only help us giggle and laugh at them. Heck even the sets and some of the wardrobe looks unfinished or half assed.<br /><br />OK granted, once you accept that you are watching a mixture of moderate stop animation and miniatures well you can sort of give in to the film and even enjoy the big robots kicking the hell out of each other. There are certain scenes when the robots are fighting that are kinda cool, and made me go "thats why I liked thid movie!" But every know and them, some crappy effect will take you right out of that protective little cocoon you were trying to hide in. And boom, your right back into realizing this film just doesn't live up to its premise.<br /><br />And heres another thing that sort of bothered me a bit about the movie. This movie is basically a movie for kids. You know, giant robots duking it out? Stop motion animation? Hello? But this movies dialogue had a lot of sexual innuendos and the violence gets a little bloody. So I kept asking myself is this a kids movie or not? After a while I just came to the conclusion that basically this was a kids movie with adult sensibilities, which really isn't a good mix.<br /><br />So for those of you who don't feel that certain naive childlike charm of watching two robots fighting each other and if you don't have a nostalgic connection to this movie (like I do) well Id suggest you steer clear away from this one. Gordons a great director, but this movie he made, just didn't do it for me. Well, at least not now that I'm a full grown adult.<br /><br />Rating: 2 out of 5
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Negative
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In a movie that follows a struggling actor, played, evidently, by a struggling actor, this does no favours for Chris Klein. He struggles to bring anything memorable to the role and meanders on through the shallow script managing to display, what could only be described as, a bland leading man. The story exists, but that is all, and fails to show any basic start, middle and end and the viewer is left shrugging his shoulders feeling as though nothing in the past hour and three quarters has really happened.<br /><br />One bright light in the midst of this is Fred Durst, who manages to stand out above his seemingly averagely talented co-stars and does a semi-decent job of bringing the backward character of Legde to life. Whether Fred can re-create this when working with a higher calibre of cast remains to be seen but I'l be watching out for him in future.
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Negative
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Watching "Der himmel über Berlin" as a teen in the late 80's was a profound experience for me - "so this was what the movies could be". Along with "Paris, Texas" and "Until the End of the World" it still holds a special place in my heart and mind - a testament to the genius of Wim Wenders.<br /><br />Unfortunately later years has seen a steady decline in the quality of his work with "Million Dollar Hotel" and "Land of Plenty" hitting a terrible low point. Gone are the captivating pictures or music. No search for or display of great insight. All that is left are characters and thinly veiled political statements, that boils down to nothing but clichés, and quite frankly mock the intelligence of a mature audience.<br /><br />Has the well run dry? Whatever the reason, it's time for Mr. Wenders to either step it up or stop altogether.
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Negative
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To be honest i had heard this was pretty bad before i decided to watch it, but i'm never one to let others influence my viewings, in fact i'm more likely to watch something out of defiance!. Bullwhip had one thing going for me before the viewing anyway, the fact that Rhonda Fleming and those gorgeous eyes was in it had me interested right away. The picture isn't very good, and is in fact very morally dubious, all the characters are corrupt and shifty in one way shape or form, all motivated by greed or egocentric victories, this is all well and good if the surrounding film can do justice to a bunch of despicable people and create a taut climax shuddering picture. Sadly it doesn't, and as the finale fills your eyes with sugar you can't help shouting out that you have been cheated into watching a pretty bad film, nobody in the cast come out with any credit, with lead man Guy Madison painfully wooden in the extreme.<br /><br />Not even the lovely Rhonda can make me recommend this to anyone, 3/10
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Negative
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In the wake of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, the British film industry rapidly became swamped with bad gangster films in the late '90s-early '00s that seem even more desperate today than they did then. In one of the all-time great cases of pearls-from-swine, the producers of Rancid Aluminium brazenly plastered the quote 'The best film of the century' from one review all over the ads while omitting the rest of the sentence pointing out that that was only because, at the time of writing, it was the only film that had been released in 2000. Looking at it today it's hard to imagine how it ever got made, uniting a cast that was briefly considered the cream of Cool Britannia's Lads Mags Brigade Rhys Ifans, Sadie Frost, Nick Moran and Joseph Fiennes but now merely a guarantee of a turkey every time in a confused adaptation of a confused James Hawes novel. That the plot is never explained could be down to the possibility that no-one really knows what it is, or perhaps simply don't think it matters. Something to do with Ifans' businessman being set up with Steven Berkoff's homicidal Russian crime lord in a money-laundering or investment scheme (it's never clear which because no-one ever asks) by Fiennes' crooked Irish accountant, who expects the Russians to kill off Ifans so he can take over his failing company. Things get increasingly confused and underexplained from there on, Ifans alternates between shouting about how terrible his life is while juggling visits to the fertility clinic and sleeping with his secretary and Tara Fitzgerald's ludicrously accented Russian temptress, Berkoff keeps on saying "Bizniss" and "Francis Drake" and Fiennes does a decent Irish accent while proving that just because he played a great writer in Shakespeare in Love doesn't mean he's any judge of good writing when it comes to film scripts.<br /><br />When the most convincing performances come from Keith Allen and Dani Behr, you know a film is in deep trouble. With Poland standing in for a Russia filled with people with Polish accents and a strange score that veers from John Barry pastiche to lounge music to Ennio Morricone spaghetti Western on a stylophone budget, it fails completely in the cool stakes it's aiming for and ends up in a curious overplotted but almost plot less limbo all its own, sitting there like a joke shop dog turd.
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Negative
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I saw this film first in the Soviet Union and many erotic scenes were simply edited out by the censorship committee. But then, in Poland in 2000, I watched it in a complete form. And so what? The plot is incredibly unwise - 2 men survive the genetic catastrophe and find themselves on the planet full of feminist strong, straight and fundamentally severe ladies. The men now try to fight it and then the whole bunch of extremely silly clichés follow - sex-drive, constant masculine desire for sex, feminists who are shown like complete idiots (you may agree with them or not, but idiots certainly they are not), and so on. The performance even of the stellar Jerzy Stuhr is here wooden and strangely bad - he just pulls unfunny faces and repeats on saying phrases like "I am in the elevator with a nude chick and I haven't done anything to her!". This was intended to be a comedy, instead, it turned out to be a vapid farce, full of predictable jokes and below-the-waist innuendos. Do not waste your time on it - this is just bad.
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Negative
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This is a truly abysmal `LOCK STOCK' clone with a stellar cast and a terrible script. I have no idea why so many top British actors signed up to this junk, they must have been bribed. A miss match of a storyline goes on forever and ever and ever and if I hadn't have paid good money for it I'd have turned it off after 10 minutes. Not the worst film ive ever seen, that honour goes to the truly pathetic used bogroll of a movie' (I use the term loosely) `GUMMO' (I feel like suing that so called `director' for the lost hour and a half of my life) but this trash is nearly right down there with it. Definitely one of the worst 5 films I have ever seen. Stuff like this reminds Hollywood that they don't have a monopoly on truly awful films.
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Negative
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Not the best of the films to be watched nowadays. I read a lot of reviews about Shining and was expecting it to be very good. But this movie disappointed me. The sound and environment was good, but there was no story here. Not was there a single moment of fright. I expected it to a horror thriller movie, but there was no horror no thriller. The only scene where I got scared was during the chapter change scene showing "Wednesday". There are lots of fragments i the movie. Most of the things are left unexplained with nothing to link it to anything. The story does not tell us about the women or other scenes that is shown. Might be a good movie to watch in the 80's, but not for the 21st century.
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Negative
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The reason the DVD releases of this film are in black and white is because nobody can get their hands on a color print of this public domain film, a modest sea story at best.<br /><br />Distributed for television thru Allied Artists, DVD's (or VHS) on the market at this time for this title are all coming from the same 16MM television print. Films distributed for television prior to 1963 were often distributed in b/w prints, because the bulk of viewers did not have color sets anyway. Striking b/w prints for television was also cheaper, as it often involved quite a few prints to cover all stations running a film on a syndicated basis.
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Negative
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If you're a fan of Mystery Science Theater 3K, Attack of the Giant Leeches, or Pinata Survival Island, this movie might be for you.<br /><br />I live in Nashville and I didn't even know of this movie's existence until the day prior to its release, when the advertising company panicked and blanketed Music Row with dozens of fliers and billboards. It barely lasted two weeks in theaters anyway.<br /><br />Bad acting, bad writing, and poor production only begin to describe this embarrassment of a film. For starters, the names are a bit much: Bo Price, Angel, and Dixie? Eesh.<br /><br />Toby's awkwardly slow delivery of lines makes one wonder what production assistant got stuck holding the cue cards off camera. Angel's character rapidly transitions from her city-slicker ways to a cowgirl, slipping into southern slang after two days on the ranch. Her wardrobe goes from chic to a female version of Toby's--in fact, in the final scene, their outfits are identical, making one wonder if the wardrobe assistant called in sick.<br /><br />The audio is inconsistent - perhaps the most noticeable example is when Toby decides to go for a swim and his voice suddenly sounds like he's shouting in a gymnasium.<br /><br />There's never quite enough explanation or character development to suffice what happens on-screen. Overacting, exasperation, grimaces, and moodiness best describes the actors' interpretation and direction of the terrible script.<br /><br />This movie is best enjoyed after consuming a couple of alcoholic beverages and in the company of your wittiest friends. But that's not saying much.
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Negative
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This film is a perfect example of the recent crop of horror films that simply are not fully realized. There are two routes to take in horror films: either you don't really explain what's going on (or who the killer is, like in Texas Chainsaw Massacre) or give the characters a lot of back story and characterization so that everything is explained (Halloween could potentially be an example of this).<br /><br />Unfortunately, Creep fails in this area. I see absolutely no reason to give a small shred of the back story for Craig without fully capturing the essence of his character or his motivation. No character is fully realized, although the circular nature of Kate's character in the film is the most accomplished part of the story.<br /><br />In the end, this story is mostly unmotivated and none of the performances give it the necessary life to make it enthralling or interesting enough to overcome the lack of context and empty film-making that drag down the film.<br /><br />This film will go down as another example of a film (as most are) that could be so much better even though it would never be great. The only thing that was used properly in the film was the setting: the characters, story, direction, and overall writing would have benefited from a serious face lift.<br /><br />Creep does serve a purpose as a mindless, silly horror movie with no intellectual or emotional investment, but sadly, that's about it...
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Negative
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Justifications for what happened to his movie in terms of distributors and secondary directors, drunks and receptionists doing script rewrites aside, let's just take this movie as it's offered, without extraneous explanations.<br /><br />This movie is God awful. Straight up craptastic. Rather than rehash what may serve as a plot, I'll run a highlight reel of some curious points that made me scratch my head.<br /><br />A class (of 5) take a field trip for a history class to the middle of friggin' nowhere Ireland. These students may be Canadian or American, it's difficult to tell. That it was filmed in a Canadian forest rather than Ireland is rather obvious as well. One student seems to know nothing about history and is basically the "dumb jock" character from a number of kick ass 80's movie, except when he channels Randy from Scream. One character may be Chris Klein's stunt double. He has a girlfriend who probably gets killed, but it's never really established if that is true. One character is sullen and removed from her peers...just...cuz... and then there's a blonde girl. Yay blonde girl.<br /><br />Ireland has a population of 2. They're cousins. Gary, who is clearly the same age or younger than the rest of the cast, is called "sir" more than once. He's very ominous and wears a knit cap. His cousin is a roughed up porn star with the worst Irish accent to befoul film in my lifetime and most likely beyond.<br /><br />Picturesque Ireland features many Canadian forests and swampy areas and 2 ducks which appear more than once in cut scenes.<br /><br />The producers got a discount on volume fake entrails. Good for them.<br /><br />Unbeknownst to me, horribly inbred freaks have access to brand spanking new hunting knives. Perhaps there's some kind of outdoorsman outlet nearby with a blind and deaf clerk working the register.<br /><br />Also unbeknownst to me, if you inbreed for roughly 600 years, as the story leads us to believe happened, you end up being somewhat lumpy, yet amazingly spry and fairly strong. Genetics are a wonderful game of craps.<br /><br />There may or may not be more than one freak in this film. Reference is made to "them" and we see shadows, yet only one odd looking dude is seen ever. And when one odd looking dude is finally killed, apparently all danger is passed. I'm running with my initial assumption that no one thought to outfit a second man in full make up, thus they just used the one. That's what it looks like on screen, anyway.<br /><br />Richard Grieco should be ashamed.<br /><br />Also of note, aside from those shiny new knives, the inbred freaks have access to some posh leather gear, as once Richard Grieco cuts his bonds, there are fresh ones ready for the next sucker who gets tied up...who also then escapes, because the chains give you enough slack to just undo them, making one wonder why they even bother tying anyone up.<br /><br />A dead body in a shack will be maggot-ridden after what I would guess is about 2 hours has passed. Said dead body will also have glasses on, when no characters wore them. Curious.<br /><br />Jenna Jameson appears for no reason from stage left, chats for 2 minutes, vanishes stage left. In the middle of a giant forest. That's not unusual, as Gary can also pop out of nowhere, which is also known as whatever exists in TV land off the screen.<br /><br />Ms. Jameson dies sadly and somehow her clothes vanish like my hopes that this movie wouldn't suck wind.<br /><br />I offer a special nod to the "Breeder" character, the poor girl who has been used by the freaks for months (or maybe years) for breeding purposes. The poor girl who still has eye shadow on and emotes on camera with all the passion and conviction of a stuffed chihuahua.<br /><br />The ending of this movie was clearly tacked on by a drunk or someone with a fierce mental disability that has been cultivated and encouraged with excessive gasoline drinking over the years.<br /><br />Apparently this wasn't just random crap I found on the movie network late at night, apparently people have heard of and even followed this movie through it's production. How sad for you all. I have nothing more to say. May God have mercy on us all.
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Negative
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Disney? What happened? I really wish the movie had been set in the 60's ;like the book was. And I really could have dealt with cheap special effects in order to save the budget for a more accurate adaption..... I'm glad that, maybe, someone might be influenced to read the books..... but, The Man With Red Eyes interchangeable as IT? And what's up with the volcanic upheaval? Where was THAT in the book? Peter Jackson! Save us!!!! A long time ago (1978) I heard that there was European version of this film. I sure wish I could id it. I can only imagine it might be closer to the real story than this poor adaption. This movie needs to be X'd.
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Negative
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As a fan of Science-fiction movies, I have been aware of The Matrix since its release in 1999. From the little bit I would allow people to tell me about it, I assumed it was highly original and sophisticated. I am also a devotee of Alice in Wonderland. I could never quite figure out how I missed The Matrix when it was released. With the imminent release of The Matrix Reloaded, it was time to buy the DVD and watch it.<br /><br />The disappointment was too great. The premise of the matrix (the controlling device as opposed to the movie) was clever. The philosophical premise of parallel worlds, alternate realities is shopworn. However, I could still have bought into the film, as science-fiction, if it stayed firmly in that genre. Unfortunately, it turned into a standard, "will they or won't they escape, break through, rescue those in need of rescue, etc." To make matters worse, it turned out to be another martial arts exercise. The problem is that science-fiction and martial arts films are really two different types. To the purest, the devotee of one or the other, mixing the two doesn't work. It is like mixing science-fiction with romance. You can have one or the other, but not both in the same film, or, at least, not both to the same extent in the same movie.<br /><br />If there were such problems with The Matrix, The Matrix Reloaded really compounded the problems. At least thirty minutes of the film were either martial arts sequences or the protracted car-chase. (This observation ignores the question, made in every professional, negative review of the movie: If Neo could do the Superman thing, why bother to fight at all? The answer, of course, is that's what draws the young, male demographic group into the theatre.) Then there is the "redemption through love" aspect. That plot device was worn out by Richard Wagner over a hundred years ago. It was actually handled better by him in Die Gotterdammerung.<br /><br />So where does that leave those who saw the Matrix Reloaded. Martial arts fans probably groaned through the trite, but arcane sci-fi philosophizing. Science fictions fans were wondering why they were sitting through a kung-fun fest. Most of the males in the audience where probably bored by the silly romance aspect of the film.<br /><br />Just what are you supposed to be getting for your bucks when you see The Matrix franchise films: Science fiction, martial arts, or soap opera? A bit of each does not make for a whole lot more of any of them, nor for a satisfying film for the afficionados of each.
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Negative
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For getting so many positive reviews, this movie really disappointed me! It is slow moving and long. At times the story is not clear, particularly in the evolving relationships among characters. My advice? Read the book, it's a fabulous story which loses it's impact on screen.
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Negative
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Another vast conspiracy movie that tries to blame the US government and the Armed Forces (especially the Army) for every disaster since the Great Flood. Anyone who has ever served time in the US military can see how bogus this film is. Uniforms, equipment, sets, and mannerisms are all wrong. (And of course, all Senior Officers are either corrupt criminals or total idiots.) Blatant propaganda with no attempt at objectivity. Most of the theories presented have been disproven over the past few years. Uses every cliche', rumor, and Urban Legend from the Gulf-all are presented as gospel. (The truth is, no one knows for sure why some GW vets are sick and others are healthy as horses.) PS This is not new. War is NOT fun and I know WWII, Korean, and Viet Nam vets with some pretty serious ailments, too. (And the government has the responsibility to take care of all of them.) Sensationalistic movies like this will not solve the problem!
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Negative
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Sexo Cannibal, or Devil Hunter as it's more commonly known amongst English speaking audiences, starts with actress & model Laura Crawford (Ursula Buchfellner as Ursula Fellner) checking out locations for her new film along with her assistant Jane (Gisela Hahn). After a long days work Laura is relaxing in the bath of her room when two very dubious character's named Chris (Werner Pochath) & Thomas (Antonio Mayans) burst in & kidnap her having been helped by the treacherous Jane. Laura's agent gets on the blower to rent-a-hero Peter Weston (Al Cliver) who is informed of the situation, the kidnappers have Laura on an isolated island & are demanding a 6 million ransom. Peter is told that he will be paid 200,000 to get her back safely & a further 10% of the 6 million if he brings that back as well, faster than a rat up a drain pipe Peter & his Vietnam Vet buddy helicopter pilot Jack are on the island & deciding on how to save Laura. So, the kidnappers have Laura & Peter has the 6 million but neither want to hand them over that much. Just to complicate things further this particular isolated island is home to a primitive tribe (hell, in all the generations they've lived there they've only managed to build one straw hut, now that's primitive) who worship some cannibal monster dude (Burt Altman) with bulging eyes as a God with human sacrifices & this cannibal has a liking for young, white female flesh & intestines...<br /><br />This Spanish, French & German co-production was co-written & directed by the prolific Jesus Franco who also gets the credit for the music as well. Sexo Cannibal has gained a certain amount of notoriety here in the UK as it was placed on the 'Video Nasties' list in the early 80's under it's alternate Devil Hunter title & therefore officially classed as obscene & banned, having said that I have no idea why as it is one bad film & even Franco, who isn't afraid to be associated with a turkey, decides he wants to hide under the pseudonym of Clifford Brown. I'd imagine even the most die-hard Franco fan would have a hard time defending this thing. The script by Franco, erm sorry I mean Clifford Brown & Julian Esteban as Julius Valery who was obviously another one less than impressed with the finished product & wanted his named removed, is awful. It's as simple & straight forward as that. For a start the film is so boring it's untrue, the kidnap plot is one of the dullest I've ever seen without the slightest bit of tension or excitement involved & the horror side of things don't improve as we get a big black guy with stupid looking over-sized bloodshot eyes plus two tame cannibal scenes. As a horror film Sexo Cannibal fails & as an action adventure it has no more success, this is one to avoid.<br /><br />Director Franco shows his usual incompetence throughout, a decapitated head is achieved by an actor lying on the ground with large leaves placed around the bottom of his neck to try & give the impression it's not attached to anything! The cannibal scenes are poor, the action is lame & it has endless scenes of people randomly walking around the jungle getting from 'A' to 'B' & not really doing anything when they get there either. It becomes incredibly dull & tedious to watch after about 10 minutes & don't forget this thing goes on for 94 minutes in it's uncut state. I also must mention the hilarious scene when Al Cliver is supposed to be climbing a cliff, this is achieved by Franco turning his camera on it's side & having Cliver crawl along the floor! Just look at the way his coat hangs & the way he never grabs onto to anything as he just pulls himself along! The gore isn't that great & as far as Euro cannibal films go this is very tame, there are some gross close ups of the cannibals mouth as it chews bits of meat, a man is impaled on spikes, there's some blood & a handful of intestines. There's a fair bit of nudity in Sexo Cannibal & an unpleasant rape scene.<br /><br />Sexo Cannibal must have had a low budget & I mean low. This is a shoddy poorly made film with awful special effects & rock bottom production values. The only decent thing about it is the jungle setting which at least looks authentic. The music sucks & sound effects become annoying as there is lots of heavy breathing whenever the cannibal is on screen. The acting sucks, the whole thing was obviously dubbed anyway but no one in this thing can act.<br /><br />Sexo Cannibal is a terrible film that commits the fatal mistake of being as boring as hell. The only good things I can say is that it has a certain sleazy atmosphere to it & those close ups of the cannibal chewing meat are pretty gross. Anyone looking for a decent cinematic experience should give Sexo Cannibal as wide a berth as possible, one to avoid.
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Negative
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Most of what has been said about the negative aspects of the film hold true.<br /><br />BUT .... If I have to sit through a movie were the:<br /><br />Director<br /><br />Director of Photography<br /><br />Editor<br /><br />Can't EVEN miss the darn Microphone Boom popping in and out of the movie for almost every Chapter of the movie, how can I enjoy and concentrate on the story as well as believe in the darn thing when I'm reminded of the technicalities of making a movie!!!!!!!<br /><br />WAIT FOR THE DVD OR DON'T BOTHER
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Negative
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What the hell is this? Its one of the dumbest movies I've seen. I don't understand why people on this site love it so much. Its senseless &nudity for no reason. Its worst then Resident Evil. I strongly don't recomend it unless you want to watch chessy, bad acting crap. Watch real horor movies such as Stephen King's It, The Shining, Jurassic Park(kinda horor), JAWS, etc. Leave this crap for a rental when there is nothing else to rent. It is bad as Crudy vs Gayson. Attack of the Killer Tomatoes is better then this crap.<br /><br />Oh wow flesh eating zombies. How many damn zobie movies do we need. SKip this one.<br /><br />* outta ****
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Negative
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This is a big step down after the surprisingly enjoyable original. This sequel isn't nearly as fun as part one, and it instead spends too much time on plot development. Tim Thomerson is still the best thing about this series, but his wisecracking is toned down in this entry. The performances are all adequate, but this time the script lets us down. The action is merely routine and the plot is only mildly interesting, so I need lots of silly laughs in order to stay entertained during a "Trancers" movie. Unfortunately, the laughs are few and far between, and so, this film is watchable at best.
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Negative
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Never even knew this movie existed until I found an old VHS copy of it, hidden deep in my dusty horror closet. The title on the box said "Insect" and the illustrations on the back made clear that it is just another insignificant and poorly produced 80's horror movie. They can surely be fun, of course, as long as don't expect an intelligent scenario and as long as you're not irritated by seeing a giant amount of cheesy make-up effects. Just about every important aspect that makes a horror movie worthy viewing is substandard here in "Blue Monkey"! The plot is ridiculous and highly unoriginal, the acting performances are painful to observe and there's a total lack of suspense. Following the always-popular trend of "big-bug" movies, "Blue Monkey" handles about a new and unknown insect species that wipes out the doctors and patients of a remote hospital. The makers couldn't be more evasive about the actual origin of this gigantically over-sized critter! All we know is that it's not from outer space and it initially crawled out of a tropical plant. Other than this, there's absolutely no explanation for where this new type of insect all of a sudden comes from! Like I said, don't get your hopes up for an intelligent screenplay. The first half of the film is entertaining enough, with some nice gore and the introduction of a couple deranged characters (an 80-year-old blind and alcoholic lady!) but the second half (when the entire hospital is put to quarantine) is dreadfully boring. It is also near the end that "Blue Monkey" begins to exaggeratedly rip-off older (and better) films. Approaching the climax, they apparently ran out of budget as well, since the lighting becomes very poor and the guy in the monster suit isn't very well camouflaged anymore. "Blue Monkey" is worth a peek in case you're really bored or if you really want to see every 80's horror movie ever made. Fans of B-cinema may recognize John Vernon ("Killer Klowns from Outer Space", "Curtains") in the small and meaningless role of Roger, who's in charge of the clinic.
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Negative
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It really impresses me that it got made. The director/writer/actor must be really charismatic in reality. I can think of no other way itd pass script stage. What I want you to consider is this...while watching the films I was feeling sorry for the actors. It felt like being in a stand up comedy club where the guy is dying on his feet and your sitting there, not enjoying it, just feeling really bad for him coz hes of trying. Id really like to know what the budget is, guess it must have been low as the film quality is really poor. I want to write 'the jokes didn't appeal to me'. but the reality is for them to appeal to you, you'd have to be the man who wrote them. or a retard. So imagine that in script form...and this guy got THAT green lit. Thats impressive isn't it?
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Negative
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I tried to watch this movie twice and both times I still couldn't make it to the end credits. First time I managed to sit through the first fight sequence then lost interest. Second time I managed to force myself to digest over an hours worth of shoddy acting, lame SFX and extremely poor direction. Pales in comparison to the original.<br /><br />Anyone ever hear about the old ET Atari 2600 fiasco? For those who haven't let me fill you in. It's 1982...ET is one of the biggest box office smashes of all time...Atari decides to release a movie tie-in game on their 2600 home console system. To cut a long and financially painful story short the game flopped big time and resulted in thousands upon thousands of Atari 2600 ET games to be dumped in landfills because they couldn't even give them away let alone sell them.<br /><br />What does Universal Soldier: The Return have to do with this story? Look at the 3.2 rating and figure it out for yourself.<br /><br />Awful film...IMDb forced me to give it a 1 out of 10 because their rating systems doesn't go as low as 0 let alone into the negatives.
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Negative
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It's funny, when you stop and think about it: fright film fans tend to a deep and abiding affection toward those who scare the daylights out of them. THE Texas CHAINSAW MASSACRE may give us nightmares, but who among us (the Faithful) didn't feel a very real twinge of love for Gunnar Hansen in BRUTAL MASSACRE- or for Ken Foree, forever and ever the resolute hero of the original DAWN OF THE DEAD? His cameo in the remake made me want to stand up and cheer (as did Tom Savini's cameo); I kid you not. And Brian Halloran and... Well, you get my drift (if not, just stand downwind...). These are some of the Heroes of Horror. To see this many of them gathered together in a single movie is almost unheard of (at least to this degree, to my knowledge). If only the writer(s) had been up to such a monumental task. Maybe someone else, somewhere along the line, will try again. As long as it's not another half-hearted effort (like BROTHERHOOD OF BLOOD, for instance).
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Negative
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I saw this movie on t.v. this afternoon and I can't see how anyone can sit through this piece of trash. It's not funny at all and it takes your I.Q. down a few notches. I know this movie is for kids, but that doesn't mean the writers should take their intelligence for granted. I bet that writers were sitting around a large wooden table and figured that a) The word "poop" equals big laugh. b) A four foot tall kid can dunk on a ten foot tall basketball net. c) Kids should always fight kidnappers armed with guns because the kidnappers will fall for anything and d) 3 months of karate training is all you need to beat up so-called "ninjas" with swords. One good thing I can say about this movie is it contains the weakest suburban "gang" in the world that couldn't scare anybody. Maybe the guys at MST3K could use this movie for a good laugh. Don't bother with this lame-ass excuse for a movie.
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Negative
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Starring an unknown cast which seem likely to remain that way, this "film" is yet another cheap slasher flick which amazes me how this was released. I have no problem with horrors and slasher flicks in particular, in fact they are my favourites. But when they are done THIS BAD, it really does take the monkey and its no wonder the genre has such a hard time. The story is as clichéd and without imagination as possible with a bunch of people in a cabin out in the woods being slashed and hacked up by this zombie/ghost guy. Its not the story that sucks the most, its the atrocious acting and dialouge, home made directing quality and an awful soundtrack. Not to mention laughable effects and some incredibly lazy film making - these morons are outside in clear daylight yet we are meant to believe it's night?? What the hell was the director thinking with this move? What, he had only one day to film all this in? He was scared of the dark? ( Is hilarious seeing a cop walking around in pure daylight with a torch acting as if its pitch black, though)<br /><br />I guess the positive side for the actors is they look like people who work in the local supermarket so at least they could possibly escape from this film without ever being noticed. Im sure one of the "teens" plays bingo down the local pub - but she's 40-45.<br /><br />Anyway, good for a laugh but just another waste of film and time.
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Negative
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OK I caught this film halfway through, but.oh.dear.god.it.sounds.like.they're.all.reading.from.scripts.<br /><br />Especially that guy who is now in Teachers and the Book Group, although at least he has proved that he can act if he wants to! (the part where someone has a heart attack stands out as a bastion of bad film making both in terms of acting, scripting and general plausibility) It quite clearly appears to be a cash-in on Human Traffic, but whilst that is not the best film ever, it is at least original and had actors whose delivery did not resemble that of earnest-yet-hopeless GCSE students trying to get a pass grade. Not so much as Human Traffic as a bit of a car crash!
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Negative
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A film starring Salma Hayek and Colin Farrell, two respected and talented actors, sounds like a great idea. An independent film sounds even better. The studios will control less of the content allowing the actors and writers and director more creativity.<br /><br />But then why is this movie so bland? Ask the dust.<br /><br />This film assumes right off the bat that we are deeply invested in the characters. No one is given a proper back story, so we don't ever know why the characters act the way they do.<br /><br />Explanations for physical and emotional scars are left to our imagination, if you still have one left at the end of this movie.<br /><br />I told a friend that I went to see this film, and that I thought it was awful.<br /><br />Her question: "Not even Colin Farrell could save it?" My response: "Not even Colin Farrell's ass could save it."
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Negative
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I was sadly disappointed by this film due to the fact that it felt false and the characters were not strong enough to carry the films pretty weak attempt at horror. The basic idea for the film was interesting but unfortunately it wasn't able to excite, really scare or shock me - there was one part in the entire film that I thought was gruesome but even that didn't redeem it. I did get to like the character of Kate by the end of the film as she seemed to soften and become a little more realistic by the end, the character played by Jeremy Sheffield was not actually needed for this film and I think the director/writer got carried away with the myriad of characters used for no purpose, if he had left it at the basic characters making it more of a solo effort on Kate's part, it may have worked - Jeremy's acting was wooden to say the least and I felt uncomfortable watching the bad on screen chemistry - or lack of it. Such a shame. Disappointing.
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Negative
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Saw this movie in my English class this afternoon and was surprised by how bad this version was. Don't get me wrong, George C. Scott was terrific as Scrooge, but the rest of the cast fails so very badly. Sometimes I couldn't stop laughing at the stupid acting and the repeated line: "Merry Christmas to everyone!" Other times I almost fell asleep.<br /><br />The movie is based on a Charles Dickens short story about a rich guy, who don't think Christmas is nothing but humbug. After 30 minutes, the rich guy is visited by three ghosts, who persuade him to celebrate Christmas after all.<br /><br />I can not understand how this movie, with a script so bad it must have been written in five minutes, can be so well-rated. Instead of this piece of garbage, I recommend to you, the Bill Murray comedy Scrooged. That at least, was funny...
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Negative
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I bought this movie last weekend at my local Movie Gallery. It was buy 2 get 2 free and I needed one more so I chose this one. Horrible mistake. The box reads like it would be a really good movie. Well, it starts out like it is going to be this great movie. For about 5 minutes, that is. The movie is about a young woman, Laila, who gets killed trying to save her beau, Jack, from a bull. Laila's dad, Cordobes, is a rancher that the townspeople are afraid of. He assumes that Jack killed Laila because she was supposedly afraid of this bull, and goes on this hunt to find him. That was the first 5 minutes that is good. What follows after that is only gonna get 100 times worse. Whoever wrote the script, in my opinion, had to of been on some kind acid trip or something because nothing else made any sense what so ever. Jack is on the run and finds this traveling radio DJ named Mary who gives him a ride. I think Mary is supposed to be a virgin Mary type character. You know, Jesus' mother. But, who knows, I couldn't make heads or tails of it. As they're running... we get to see bad guys, magical visions, ghostly encounters, flashbacks, etc... And all these things are done in such a way that your brain hurts from trying to figure out what's going on. Needless to say, I took the movie back and exchanged it for something else. It's horrible I tell ya, horrible. And, there is absolutely no bull-fighting in this movie. Unless you count the first minute of the movie. Hope I helped some other people keep from wasting their time on this movie.
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Negative
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This movie displayed more racial hatred of Jews by David Mamet than I have<br /><br />have ever encountered in an American film. The sterotypes are so over the top that my ability to continue watching died. I was so disappointed at Joe<br /><br />Mantegna calling a bunch of men ,sitting in a New York Jewish center cleaning weapons ,heros that common sense prevailed and I stopped. I am deeply<br /><br />disturbed at the concept that Jews are not Americans and "different". I suggest that Mr. Mamet is one of the causes of hatred not a healer of same.
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Negative
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The show is average. It doesn't make me laugh particularly. However, I think Courtney really brings it down. She doesn't look natural. She has these three ways to talk, all robotic. She talks quietly (with no intonation), she talks normally (with no intonation), or she does that thing where she starts talking normally, and starts yelling gradually. However, her yelling is like "let's pretend I'm yelling because I shouldn't be too loud on the set". <br /><br />She is constantly aware of herself being this cute actress doing this funny thing. It's annoying. You can't really get her personality, because she doesn't really produce emotion, and doesn't get upset. She has this husband, who's doing all these stupid things, and there is no reaction from her. Very dry and plain acting.
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Negative
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I rented this by mistake. I thought, after a cursory examination of the box, that this was a time-travel/sci-fi story. Instead, it's a "Christian" story, and I suppose is fairly typical example. If you are sold on the message you probably will overlook the awkwardness of the plot/acting/etc., but I found it rather painful. <br /><br />I have to admit that I'm bothered by the rewriting of history in this story. It paints the 1890's as some sort of paradise of family values and morality (a character is aghast that 5% of marriages end in divorce!), but it overlooks very unsavory sides of this "highly moral" society (rigid racial, sexual, and social discrimination were widespread, for instance). And at one point the hero complains to a clothing store owner about things that sound not all that different than the complaints of some Iranian leaders about women's clothing styles (as reported in a recent WSJ).<br /><br />Overall, thought, I suppose that it's the sort of thing you'll like if you like this sort of thing, and it's certainly wholesome...
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Negative
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This is a badly made, poor remake of Bimalda's classic Parineeta. The story is based on Sarat Chandra's book of the same name and it is a distortion of the original. Well one can appreciate some degree of creativity but not sham creativity. The acting by everyone is affected and the entire movie is a sham. Shekar's father's choice of words in abusing Lolita ( Balan ) sounds cheap and morbid and destroys the spirit of the original story. Again the scene where Shekhar ( Saif ) slaps Lolita is quite out of place with the flow of the movie and the characters, is quite jarring to the senses, and could have been easily avoided. Similarly the sex scene between Saif and Balan is quite unbecoming the movie and a cheap gimmick to attract the audience. When a creative work is not faithful to the original and destroys it's spirit, the work falls apart. The song "piyu bole" is quite OK. Another silver lining in the dark cloud of this movie is the scene where Saif stands up for himself and rebels against his father. This is a positive departure from the original and deserves credit. On these counts this movie deserves 3 stars. The song and dance by Rekha smacks of artifice and it is a put on. The song is tuneful but I remember having heard it somewhere before and if Iam not mistaken the tune appears to have been plagiarized. <br /><br />Well, agreed the times have changed from then to now. But then this movie is not even reflective of the modern times.<br /><br />This is what happens when the modern Bollywood film makers get increasingly obsessed with impressing the NRIs and grabbing the lucrative NRI entertainment market. Such movies end up neither belonging to India nor to any other part of the world.
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Negative
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All I could think of while watching this movie was B-grade slop. Many have spoken about it's redeeming quality is how this film portrays such a realistic representation of the effects of drugs and an individual and their subsequent spiral into a self perpetuation state of unfortunate events. Yet really, the techniques used (as many have already mentioned) were overused and thus unconvincing and irrelevant to the film as a whole.<br /><br />As far as the plot is concerned, it was lacklustre, unimaginative, implausible and convoluted. You can read most other reports on this film and they will say pretty much the same as I would.<br /><br />Granted some of the actors and actresses are attractive but when confronted with such boring action... looks can only carry a film so far. The action is poor and intermittent: a few punches thrown here and there, and a final gunfight towards the end. Nothing really to write home about.<br /><br />As others have said, 'BAD' movies are great to watch for the very reason that they are 'bad', you revel in that fact. This film, however, is a void. It's nothing.<br /><br />Furthermore, if one is really in need of an educational movie to scare people away from drug use then I would seriously recommend any number of other movies out there that board such issues in a much more effective way. 'Requiem For A Dream', 'Trainspotting', 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas' and 'Candy' are just a few examples. Though one should also check out some more lighthearted films on the same subject like 'Go' (overall, both serious and funny) and 'Halfbaked'.<br /><br />On a final note, the one possibly redeeming line in this movie, delivered by Vinnie Jones was stolen from 'Lock, Stock and Two Smokling Barrels'. To think that a bit of that great movie has been tainted by 'Loaded' is vile.<br /><br />Overall, I strongly suggest that you save you money and your time by NOT seeing this movie.
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Negative
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I don't what that other review was talking about. This definitely isn't a bimbo movie, in fact, I don't think there was one decent looking girl in it. No, it's just cheesy, poorly-done, Ed Wood-style science fiction schlock. And it's bad. I can't even begin to tell you how bad it is. I saw it late at night on cable, and I was in shock. The fact that this movie was ever released is an insult to us all. The actors were either friends of the producer or mentally retarded, the special effects are a joke, and the pace is insanely slow. To me though, the music tops it all. A monkey could write a better theme with a toy xylophone. Do not rent this thing, but if you ever see it on cable, watch it. You'll be amazed at how bad a movie can be.
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Negative
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Having just recently re-viewed "Lipstick" for the first time in a few decades, I backed it with "Descent" even though I have heard more negative comments than good from other film friends with tastes as varied as mine.<br /><br />It's interesting to contrast how the unique niche of the Rape Revenge movie has evolved in the past 32 years, from the full-on gore of "I Spit On Your Grave," to the tawdry sensationalism of "Lipstick," to the tasteful handling of the issue in "The Accused." But "Descent," though making some important points, never really offers us anything truly new in terms of revelatory meaning. No, "Descent" is so poorly made in terms of picture and sound quality that it detracts from any significant message it could hope to make --- a message that, when examined closely, isn't that groundbreaking.<br /><br />I pretty much knew the plot going in. What I wanted to see *was* the "descent" or degeneration of Dawson's character. Being a big fan of Rosario's, I was anxious to see the layers being stripped away and her psyche being slowly twisted...you know, the kind of portrayal DeNiro brings to "Taxi Driver." Unfortunately, the script and the director/writer's choices don't provide any sort of believable transition.<br /><br />The biggest point of failure is the second act. It became obvious what the filmmaker's intentions were for this segment of club-hopping, drug use, and obsession with big black stallion Adrian (every white boy's nightmare, natch) from a Q&A on the DVD, but this excursion into Dawson's character is never believably rendered. We don't know exactly what the hell she's doing half the time, what she's after, or why she's doing it. The poor quality of the audio/video again don't help, but the sequence is just too damn long and pointless. It destroys any momentum and investment in the lead character set up during the otherwise exceptionally well-done first act. By the time we get to the finale, our interest has already waned.<br /><br />One point of success that Dawson does point out in the Q&A is that by the end "revenge" scene we are pumped for retribution, then realize just how drawn-out and ugly the reality is. While that's certainly valid, it doesn't make the scene any more intriguing.<br /><br />If you have the DVD, check out the deleted "classroom" scene. This is an excellent 8 minute plus outtake that crackles with energy and provocation (though all verbal) and really DOES show Dawson's slow crack-up materializing as she delightfully vivisects poor Francie Swift's prissy, condescending dorm counselor. If more expository scenes like this had been added and more of the middle third cut down, we might have an interesting psychological study of the impact of senseless acts of violence.<br /><br />As the film stands in the final cut, though, all we get is what we've seen before, only in a more graphic rendering. So what?
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Negative
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not your typical vamp story, not bram stoker or anne rice here. a truly original vampyre story. these vampyres are genetic mutants who the sunlight don't bother. they are pure evil to. <br /><br />the film is not perfect. many of the actors are clearly amateurs. the two leads who play van helsing and rally the vampyre chick are pretty good though. the film is intensely violent which may disturb some people. also it is loaded with scientific detail that many will find hard to understand and may get bored with. i was sold on the clever storyline and the couple good performances. no telling how successful this film could be if they had a bigger budget and it got mass distribution
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Negative
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John Heder was absolutely horrendous in this movie. I felt like I was watching a bad college kid act for the first time in a student film. Anna Farris was par for the course, not good, but not horrible (plus she's cute). Dianne Keaton should have known better. Jeff Daniels was the only saving grace in this movie (even though it was poor judgement on his part as well). <br /><br />All in all, I would avoid this at all costs. I'm just glad I didn't pay to see it! <br /><br />John Heder will forever be stuck in the typecast role of' the dorky kid,' unless he does some SERIOUS work on his acting chops.
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Negative
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John Heder was absolutely handsome in this movie. I felt like I was watching a hunk college kid act for the first time in his breakout film. Anna Farris was more than par for the course (plus she's cute). Dianne Keaton knew well. Jeff Daniels was a bonus in this movie (it was good judgement on his part as well). <br /><br />All in all, I would buy this at all costs. I'm glad I paid to see it! <br /><br />John Heder will forever be stuck in the typecast role of' the dorky kid,' and he doesn't need to change.
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Positive
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If you hit your teens in the 70s, as I did, you probably remember the stories about Studio 54 whether or not you liked disco. An exclusive club, it was the perfect symbol of 70s cultural overindulgence and self-absorption; there's even an excellent VH1 documentary about the club that could tell you everything you wanted to know about its heyday, and the stories are easily interesting enough to spawn a very captivating film.<br /><br />Sadly, this isn't it. 54 follows the lives of a few of its employees, a bartender named Shane (Ryan Phillippe), a busboy named Greg (Breckin Meyer), his wife, a coat-check girl, Anita (Selma Hayek), and of course the master of ceremonies himself, Steve Rubell (Mike Meyers). While the goings-on at the club are well represented, this film concerns itself more with the personal lives of the workers, following Shane's story the closest.<br /><br />The movie works in spurts. Sometimes it captures perfectly the shallowness of the nightlife culture (such as when Shane is taken to a dinner party and doesn't know who 'Errol Flynt' is), and other times it waxes into hokey melodrama. Some of that is inherent in the premise following the underlings as they mingle in the world of the rich and fabulous but a lot of it is due to the kid-gloved treatment with which both the club and Rubell are given throughout the movie. While Rubell certainly electrified the scene in New York with his penchant for over-the-top spectacle and his exclusive hand-picking of the crowds each night, the rampant drugs and sexuality are only briefly touched on; and Rubell himself, while his excesses are mentioned, come off oddly positive for a guy who was in life a liar, a cheat, a drug abuser, and promiscuous as all hell. Not that I was looking for the man to be pilloried here, but his ego directly contributed to the fall of his club and the diminishing of the nightlife culture he helped to elevate. A final scene where he gazes down at the regulars paternally is so emotionally false as to be patently absurd.<br /><br />Meyers does his best to capture Rubell, but he's given so little to work with here it's surprising his performance is effective; but he's good, and he helps to anchor the film. Philippe, whom I find generally to be a good actor, is hamstrung here by the shallowness and stupidity of his character; he's limited to a deer-in-the-headlights smile or a sullen uncomprehending frown, and even he can't translate that into a strong performance. Hayek and Meyer are both okay, again, undercut by the writing, and Neve Campbell prominently featured on the DVD cover appears so briefly she really has an extended cameo.<br /><br />For some reason I still find myself interested, even fascinated, by the popular culture of the second half of the seventies. But even given that, this is not a film that particularly engaged me, despite a predisposition to like it. I'd say if that era, or that club, has any interest for you, track down the VH1 special rather than this middle-of-the-road melodrama.
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Negative
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With the releasing of "Farligt förflutet" Swedish film industry has truly hit rock bottom. Stefan (Jens Hultén) has for the past years lived a calm life with his wife Marie (Regina Lund). One day an old friend of Stefan´s arrives with a favor to ask him. Stefan is to do a small courier job. He is supposed to bring a suitcase filled with heroine through the Sweden-Germany customs. Unfortunately things in Germany don´t work out as planned and Stefan is now in big trouble. It is always nice to see a Swedish film that breaks the traditional family-drama pattern. Unfortunately if the people involved in the production have no clue of how a movie is supposed to be written, filmed or cut the result can only be catastrophic. The content can be concluded with: bad acting, an incoherent plot and idiotic dialogs. The only highlight in the movie is the unprovoked sex-scene wit the incredibly beautiful Regina Lund. This lasts for only a few seconds leaving approxamitly 90 minutes of pure, let´s say what it truly is, crap.
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Negative
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I was bored, around 10pm, so I watched this movie. And I could not stop laughing. Everything was so ridiculous. The way the kids were acting like they were older than 11 just cracked me up. One of the kids had a ring, that supposedly killed people after 3 or so years. It gave me the impression that he wanted to be a gangster.<br /><br />It's pretty hard to take little kids seriously, especially when it has to do with eating worms. They act like everything is such a big deal, like if Billy (the main character) doesn't eat the worms then the world will end.<br /><br />This is a good movie for little kids (excluding the fact that a 5 year old says 'penis'), but not for teens or adults who don't want to waste their time.
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Negative
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I am not saying that Night of the Twisters was horrible, but it was far from great. Mediocre at absolute best. I seems though that every time one type of movie is released, a second must be around the same time. (Think about Armageddon and Deep Impact, Volcano and Dante's Peak) Night of the Twisters is really just Twister except worse and with mundane special effects.<br /><br />I have nothing against the actors who starred in it, even if they weren't great, it was the movie itself, the directing, the special effects, the whole storyline was just too strange to interpret. A series of tornadoes strike a town and basically the movie is about people trying to find family and friends and deal with the damage.<br /><br />I really don't know why it seems as though duplicates of disaster movies are released almost in sync with each other, but this one would have been better with Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt.
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Negative
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Kubrick meets King. It sounded so promising back in the spring of 1980, I remember. Then the movie came out, and the Kubrick cultists have been bickering with the King cultists ever since.<br /><br />The King cultists say Stanley Kubrick took a great horror tale and ruined it. The Kubrick cultists don't give a damn about King's story. They talk about Steadicams, tracking shots, camera angles.This is a film, they insist: It should be considered on its own. As it happens, both camps are correct. Unfortunately.<br /><br />If one views it purely as an adaptation of King's novel, "The Shining" is indeed a failure, a wasted opportunity, a series of botched narrative gambits. <br /><br />I used to blame that on Kubrick's screenwriter. The writer Diane Johnson (author of Le Marriage, L'Affaire, Le Divorce, etc.) has a reputation as an novelist of social manners. Maybe she was chosen for her subtle grasp of conjugal relations or family dynamics. But the little blue-collar town of Sidewinder, Colorado doesn't exist on any map in her Francophile universe. <br /><br />Kubrick the Anglophile probably found her congenial, however. He, of course, is the real auteur. And considered on its own merits, his screenplay for "The Shining" -- with its mishmash of abnormal psychology, rationalism, supernaturalism, and implied reincarnation -- just doesn't stand up to logical analysis.<br /><br />I'm willing to consider Kubrick's "Shining" on its own terms. I'm even willing to take it as something other than a conventional horror-genre movie. But it doesn't succeed as a naturalistic study of isolation, alienation, and madness either. Parsed either way, the film pretty much falls apart.<br /><br />Are the horrors of the Overlook Hotel real? Or do they exist only in the mind -- first as prescient nightmares suffered by little Danny Torrance, then as the hallucinations of his father? One notes how whenever Jack Torrance is seen talking to a "ghost" he is in fact looking into a mirror. One notes how the hotel's frozen topiary-hedge maze appears to symbolize Jack's stunted, convoluted psyche. Very deep stuff.<br /><br />But if indeed the Overlook's "ghosts" are purely manifestations of Jack Torrance's growing insanity, then who exactly lets the trapped Jack out of the hotel kitchen's dead-bolted walk- in closet, so that he can go on his climactic ax-wielding rampage?<br /><br />And can ANYONE explain, with a straight face, that black-and-white photograph (helpfully labelled "1921") of Nicholson as a tuxedoed party-goer that pops up out of left field and onto a hotel-ballroom wall during the film's closing seconds? Are we to seriously conclude that Jack Torrance's Bad Craziness stems from a some sort of "past life" experience? (And if you swallow that, since when are reincarnated people supposed to be exact physical replicas their past selves?)<br /><br />Maybe Kubrick didn't care about his storyline. Maybe only wanted to evoke a mood of horror. Whatever the case, the film tries to hedge its narrative bets -- to have it both ways, rational and supernatural. As a result, the story is a mess. This movie hasn't improved with age, and it certainly doesn't improve with repeated viewings.<br /><br />I don't deny that a few moments of fear, claustrophobia, and general creepiness are scattered throughout this long, long film. But those gushing Elevators o' Blood, seen repeatedly in little Danny's visions, are absurd and laughable. And Jack Torrance's infamous tag lines ("Wendy, I'm home!" and "Heeeeeere's JOHNNY!") merely puncture the movie's dramatic tension and dissipate its narrative energy. (I know: I sat in the theater and heard the audience laugh in comic relief: "Whew! Glad we don't have to take this stuff seriously!") Finally, Kubrick is completely at sea -- or else utterly cynical -- during those scenes in which Wendy wanders around the empty hotel while her husband tries to puree their son. A foyer full of mummified guests, all sitting there dead in their party hats? Yikes, now I really am afraid.<br /><br />Given Jack Nicholson's brilliance over the years, one can only assume that he gave just the sort of eyeball-rolling, eyebrow-wiggling, scenery-chomping performance that the director wanted. The performance of Shelley Duvall, as a sort of female version of Don Knotts in "The Ghost and Mr. Chicken," is best passed over in silence.<br /><br />This movie simply doesn't succeed -- not as an adaptation, not on its own terms. It probably merits a 3 out of 10, but I'm giving it a 1 because it has been so GROTESQUELY over-rated in this forum.
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Negative
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Long on action and stunt work, but so short on character delineation and development that it failed to hold our interest. Not always easy to figure out which side a character is on and who's doing what to whom.
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Negative
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If they could get Ed Asner why didn't they get other actors instead of people who go to the same church as the producers? And why did the protagonist throw the wise old sage character to the ground when he was never in danger. It forced the old guy to mask the injury out of pride and so the young guy would feel guilty leaving him with a life long disability. I guess thats why the main character refuses money though and why the old guy works him like a dog even when he volunteers for extra work. If the d-bag boyfriend is a bad guy because he is long-distance boyfriend then why is a soldier any better. He has good reason to be jealous, good reason to get her away from her hometown and over protective, controlling manipulative father. All the characters that are meant to be likable aren't and everyone else is the 'bad' boyfriend. How did they meet anyway, a wine broker and a saw mill worker?
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Negative
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When I had first heard of "Solar Crisis" then got a load of the cast, I wondered why I had never heard of a movie with such a big cast before. Then I saw it.<br /><br />Now I know.<br /><br />For a movie that encompasses outer space, the sun, vast deserts and sprawling metropolises, this is an awfully cramped and claustrophobic feature; it feels like everyone is hunkered close together so the camera won't have to pull too far back.<br /><br />And the effects, while good, are pretty underwhelming; we're talking about the imminent destruction of the planet Earth if a team of scientists and soldiers cannot deflect a deadly solar flare. But other than shouting, sweating and a red glow about everything, there's no real feel of emergency.<br /><br />Don't get me started about the cast. What Heston, Palance, Matheson, Boyle, et al are doing in this movie without even bothering to act with any feel for the material is anyone's guess. Makes you wonder who else's condos aren't paid for in Hollywood....<br /><br />And as far as the end goes.... Well, let's just say it's tense and intriguing but it's too little too late in an effort like this. If it had kept up that kind of pace all through the film, maybe I would have heard of "Solar Crisis" sooner.<br /><br />Two stars. Mostly for lost opportunities and bad career moves. <br /><br />I wonder how Alan Smithee keeps his job doing junk like this?
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Negative
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The major fault in this film is that it is impossible to believe any of these people would ever be cast in a professional production of Macbeth. Hearing David Lansbury's soft voice struggling laboriously with the famous "Tomorrow, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow" speech made it impossible to believe anyone would ever consider him for the role. I kept believing therefore that he didn't get the part because he was a lousy actor; not because a bigger name was available. Then when we see portions of the play in rehearsal it is difficult to believe the director is not parodying things with a hopelessly miscast, misdirected travesty of actors who are unable to articulate or even understand the verse and directors who see the play through their own screwball interpretations. Sometimes directors are so anxious to have their films done (and writers think they have the ability to direct their own works)that they settle for less. This appears to be such an example.
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Negative
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Boy this movie had me fooled. I honestly thought it would be a campy horror film with absolutely no humor in it whatsoever, boy I got the cold shoulder that time. This movie was, and I'm truthful, pretty damn good. It was not scary at all but the campiness and the sly humor really mad this movie interesting. Some to the horrible acting and cliché killings were so painful to watch, I almost laughed at how bad it was, but to some extent I enjoyed it. The killings all vaguely relate to snow sports and Christmas, which made things more intriguing. The POV camera angles were awesome.<br /><br />The movie is about a viscous killer who dies in a car accident collision with a chemical truck while being transported to prison. He is later resurrected in that very same chemical with snow spliced into the mixture. These were the ingredients chosen to make the perfect killer snowman. He than takes his revenge, as the snowman, on the police officer who convicted him.<br /><br />This movie had such bad acting, with the exception of Christopher Allport, that is was funny. I will say that I am also pretty disappointed that this movie was not a horror, but in fact a dark sitcom. They had a great story with a good plot but it wasn't executed right. All in all I like the movie at first but now it is really annoying. But this movie is way better and darker than the sequel.
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Negative
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This film is deeply disappointing. Not only that Wenders only displays a very limited musical spectrum of Blues, it is his subjective and personal interest in parts of the music he brings on film that make watching and listening absolutely boring. The only highlight of the movie is the interview of a Swedish couple who were befriended with J.B. Lenoir and show their private video footage as well as tell stories. Wenders's introduction of the filmic topic starts off quite interestingly - alluding to world's culture (or actually, American culture) traveling in space, but his limited looks on the theme as well as the neither funny nor utterly fascinating reproduction of stories from the 30s renders this movie as a mere sleeping aid. Yawn. I had expected more of him.
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Negative
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This movie was absolutly awful. I can't think of one thing good about it. The plot holes were so huge you could drive a Hummer through them. The acting was soo stuningly bad that even Jean Claude should be ashamed, and that is saying alot!!! And dialogue, What dialogue???To think that I was a fan of the first one (I use that comment loosely, its more like a guilty pleasure, than anything else). This movie had Goldberg in it for crying out loud!!!! Nothing good can come of this movie. What makes this film even worse is that it is soo bad you can't even watch it with a bunch of friends to make fun of!!! This has got to be in my top five worst movies of all time. 2/10 because it is soo hard for me to give a 1.
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Negative
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Just what we need! Another remake of vintage Hollywood cinema, with Eddie Murphy miscast again in his second time around after THE NUTTY PROFESSOR (1996)! This shows why we're running out of special ideas in making a quality movie, ladies and gentlemen! It has some signs of hope for its likeable and delightful imagery of animals who can act and speak with humans. Things can only get more worse, unfortunately. Bathroom jokes and sexual references kill this piece of "family" funfare instantly. Even parents and children saw the trailer ad on The Family Channel, which was followed by utter angst and disgust in the movie theater. Sad to say this is the more progressive pre-millennium era, but enjoy it while it lasts 'cause things can only get worse with time. More went wrong with the all-new DR. DOLITTLE. It is absolutely plotless, feeling too flat. I also hate that irritating voice of Chris Rock!!! We need more talented voice-overs than a bunch of overpaid celebs who don't want to declare bankruptcy. I'll have to agree on my local newspaper giving this among the top five worst movies of 1998. Then again, the original version wasn't any good, either. Murphy's next project could be PATTON if he's not careful!
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Negative
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Mindless dribble about the second coming of Christ in the form of a hippie and albino looking Sandra Locke. You have no idea what's happening on the screen with the irritating theme song "Suzanne" being played over and over throughout the movie until when "The Second Coming of Suzanne" is over you already know it by hard no matter how hard you try to forget the whole thing.<br /><br />This off-the-wall armature movie maker Logan,Jared Martin, is out to make the movie of the century but is so rude and obnoxious that none in the banking world is willing to finance his project. Planning to go on his own Logan then spots this couple at a seaside café and is fascinated with the young woman Suzanne, Sandra Locke, who reminds him of someone he knew in another life: Jesus Christ.<br /><br />With Logan's assistant and all around gofer Clavius, Richard Dreyfuss,somehow getting a $740,000.00 loan from the bank to finance Logan's masterpiece he starts to work on Suzanne by flattering her about her talent as an actress in order to get her interested to be in his film. This leads to Suzanne not only leaving her boyfriend artist Simon, Paul Sand, but later Simon being so depressed and feeling all alone takes a gun to his mouth and blows his brains out.<br /><br />The movie also has two somewhat unrelated sub-plots in it that has to do with a young autistic girl Dorothy, Kari Avalos, who's cured of her autism by Suzanne after everyone else, at the psychiatric hospital that she was committed to,failed. It's not really known what exactly Suzanne was doing at the hospital but she seemed to be some kind of orderly or volunteer there; was this supposed to show us in the audience that she, like Jesus, could miraculously heal the sick?<br /><br />There's also this newspaper columnist and big time businessman tycoon Jackson Sinclair, Gene Barry, who seems to be either going through a very difficult mid-life crisis or has seen a biblical-like vision that changed his life forever. Sinclair had been searching for the meaning of life as well as what it's all about all through the movie and wanted to know why there's all this suffering in the world, like this movie that he's in, and seemed to have found the answer when he first laid his eyes on Suzanne. Sinclair also got some sense knocked into his head when his private chauffeur David, Mark Rasmusser, who's gotten sick and tired of his weird and crazy hallucinations almost running him off a cliff in a kamikaze like drive along the Pacific Coast.<br /><br />The movie "The Second Coming of Suzanne" goes on with a number of unrelated sequences, probably to fill or pad in some time by it's director and film editor, and then goes to it's final scene in a Christ-like crucification on a hill as Logan has all the cameras rolling. It turns out that the crazed Logan got so carried away with his masterpiece as he tried to replicate, on the helpless and tied up Suzanne, the actual crucification of Jesus Christ some 2,000 years ago.<br /><br />Hard to sit through and almost impossible to follow "The Second Coming of Suzanne" puts you through the same kind torture that Suzanne is put through by Logan and the makers of the film. The movie tries to be arty but that's just an excuse to cover up it's brainless and non-existent storyline and even worse the terrible and amateurish acting by everyone in it.
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Negative
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I have grown up reading Modesty Blaise, both the comics and the books, and she truly is a heroine to me. Although not being a great fan of Quentin Tarantino I anyway was interested to hear a few years back that he was considering making a film of her: could he finally give Modesty a nice big screen treatment she's worthy of? I heard of 'My Name Is Modesty' a few months ago and checked the stars it had been given here, and wasn't too surprised to find out the score was not too high, since beloved characters often have hard time melting the fans' heart if not done exactly right. So I decided not to read any reviews and see the film instead, and well, I just finished watching it, and I'm stunned, and sad, and yeah, pretty furious, too. Sad and furious of giving over an hour of my time seeing something so fabulous as Modesty Blaise-character being turned into a film that has nothing to give to a viewer or a fan.<br /><br />It seems that almost everything about this film is sub-par and unprofessional, although I must admit seeing some actors in other films earlier where they were fine so I can't blame them. But the screenplay and the directing... my god, why even make this kind of crap with production values slightly bigger than your average TV-film but done much worse? I don't know the background of this film and actually I really don't want to know, but I just can't help wondering that how on earth could Tarantino with a straight face tell that he loves Modesty and then put his name on this? He just lost a huge amount of respect in my eyes. The director was not the right man for this job and I can honestly thank him for ruining my night.<br /><br />I give this film 3 stars and those stars go to the actors and the technical quality which could've been worse. The other seven stars missing are what this film was not good at. Oh well, hopefully at some point there will be a serious production of The Modesty Blaise Movie that has some other goals than to steal money from the Modesty fans. Although if people like Tarantino are the ones making the decisions I'm not holding my breath.
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Negative
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boring stuff we got here. His 5 minute shorts are better than this. know why? because there only 5 minutes and not 91 minutes or how ever long this is. <br /><br />The plot is kinda... eh.. the last half hour is alright the rest is boring and not funny =( I had my hopes up, the trailer made it look funny but the pace of this movie is pretty slow and sadly not funny. Just plain boring klaymen running into each other and trying to make us laugh.. not working.<br /><br />Maybe next time knox.<br /><br />Maybe re-cutting this movie and adding better scenes would do a lot of healing but for now its just not good.
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Negative
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I've waited a long time to see DR TARR'S TORTURE DUNGEON and after I watched it, I was really disappointed by it. It's not the Baroque film I expected it to be. The trailer (which I saw on a Something Weird DVD) is much better than the entire film, which is remarkably forgettable. There are almost no stand out scenes in it and the look and feel is interesting but it doesn't even come close to other Baroque styled movies out there, from Fellini or Jodorowsky. The characters are dull and there's almost nothing dramatic going on, even though we see rape, crucifixion, insanity, etc.<br /><br />The main problem with DR TARR'S TORTURE DUNGEON was the fact that it was a talk-a-thon more than anything else. It was almost like watching a book. I just wanted the film to have moments of silence or mood or something, instead we see/listen to the main characters chit-chat endlessly about dull stuff.<br /><br />A missed opportunity.
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Negative
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This movie tries hard, but completely lacks the fun of the 1960s TV series, that I am sure people do remember with fondness. Although I am 17, I watched some of the series on YouTube a long time ago and it was enjoyable and fun. Sadly, this movie does little justice to the series.<br /><br />The special effects are rather substandard, and this wasn't helped by the flat camera-work. The script also was dull and lacked any sense of wonder and humour. Other films with under-par scripting are Home Alone 4, Cat in the Hat, Thomas and the Magic Railroad and Addams Family Reunion.<br /><br />Now I will say I liked the idea of the story, but unfortunately it was badly executed and ran out of steam far too early, and I am honestly not sure for this reason this is something for the family to enjoy. And I was annoyed by the talking suit, despite spirited voice work from Wayne Knight.<br /><br />But the thing that angered me most about this movie was that it wasted the talents of Christopher Lloyd, Jeff Daniels and Daryl Hannah, all very talented actors. Jeff Daniels has pulled off some good performances before, but he didn't seem to have a clue what he was supposed to be doing, and Elizabeth Hurley's character sadly came across as useless. Daryl Hannah is a lovely actress and generally ignored, and I liked the idea of her being the love interest, but sadly you see very little of her,(not to mention the Monster attack is likely to scare children than enthrall them) likewise with Wallace Shawn as some kind of government operative. Christopher Lloyd acquits himself better, and as an actor I like Lloyd a lot(he was in two of my favourite films Clue and Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and I am fond of Back To The Future) but he was given little to work with, and had a tendency to overact quite wildly.<br /><br />Overall, as much I wanted to like this movie, I was left unimpressed. Instead of being fun, it came across as pointless, and that is a shame because it had a lot of potential, with some talented actors and a good idea, but wasted with poor execution. 1/10 Bethany Cox
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Negative
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I have to say as being a fan of the man who created Halloween/The Fog/Christine/The Thing - probably his best films.<br /><br />Then you got this POS. I can't logically think he put any effort at all into this like he did with Cigarette Burns. At least his son made a decent soundtrack.<br /><br />You have to look at this from the standpoint that it didn't seem like a movie. It looked as if someone else directed it for one thing. I won't believe Carpenter put any effort into this at all.<br /><br />I was just listening to his old school H2/H3/The Fog soundtrack and it was awesome, especially for the times.<br /><br />He was using a style that no one had and it worked so well for his films.
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Negative
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This doesn't quite plumb the depths of Creepshow 3, but it comes close. It also uses the same technique of using some of the same actors in multiple roles throughout the anthology, which is distracting to say the least.<br /><br />It also rather irritating rips off The Twilight Zone (with the bookshop being comparable to Serling's later Night Gallery). Unfortunately, the producers & writers forgot that Serling would build up sympathy for his characters before messing them over. None of the characters are particularly sympathetic or interesting until the last segment.<br /><br />Framing story: Adam West is... well, himself. He doesn't go the Bruce Wayne/Batman campy 60s route, but he rarely does. He simply plays the not-particularly-enigmatic "Jay" (there's an ominous spine-chilling name to compare to the likes of Dr. Terror, Eramus, and The Cryptkeeper), and makes some mildly awkward/creepy statements.<br /><br />Abernathy: Seen Rod Serling's "A Stop in Willoughby"? Then you've seen this. The red herring of the nutso wife is introduced to no purpose, but even the main character's friend identifies him as a wimp. As well directed as can be expected, but basically incoherent.<br /><br />Nex's Diner: Reminiscent of various Serling time travel stories, mixed with Steve Allen's "A Meeting of Minds." Most of the actors aren't too bad (except for Josh Astin as Cassius, who manages to walk, talk and even breathe awkwardly), and the idea is mildly interesting. But like Abernathy, it doesn't go anywhere. The main character raises some relatively reasonable questions, bugs out a bit (who wouldn't?), and for some reason he ends up banished to a nuclear wasteland.<br /><br />Life Replay: Not a bad little piece, and manages to predate both Click and Creepshow 3. I suppose it says something that people are fascinated by the magical properties of remote controls. The main character is mildly sympathetic. Nothing substantially innovative here, but it's okay.<br /><br />Fighting Spirit: You see the twist coming a mile away but like the main character, it has some heart and it's a decent story of defeat and redemption.<br /><br />Finale: So... why do people end up in cold storage in silver lame suits? Don't know. And doesn't make sense. So... all the protagonists wandered into the bookstore and became trapped? Kinda undermines the happy ending with the boxer (thanks, guys!), and the guy in the first segment died. So how did he get trapped? Did he visit the bookstore before he died, got trapped and... didn't die? What? Huh? I supposer this isn't expected to make sense because it's supernatural. But still...<br /><br />Overall: basically not dissimilar from the two newer Twilight Zone series, or some episodes of Tales From the Darkside or Monsters. The last two stories and part of the second are probably worth your time. But there's nothing really spectacular here.
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Negative
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I had several problems with the movie: <br /><br />(1) The screenplay -- specifically, Kim Basinger's voice over: Movies are not books; they should *show* the action rather than have a voice over *tell* us what's happening. Occasionally I find a movie with a voice over that works, but here it seemed more of a lazy way of writing the script. In fact, it sounded to me as if she was practically reading excerpts from the novel in her voice over.<br /><br />(2) I felt no emotion in the relationship between Jessie and Brother Thomas and also felt that Alex Carter's acting was pretty bad. That's a significant failure for me in defining Jessie's and Thomas' characters -- with no connection between them, it seemed to me as if she just wanted a stud and that for him it was a matter of being sex-deprived. If it had been properly done, the relationship between them would have given much more context to the story.<br /><br />(3) With the book, I understood Jessie's mid-life crisis. In the movie, it seemed more like just plain boredom.<br /><br />On the plus side, I didn't think the movie was so bad as for me to turn off the TV . . . though that thought did occur to me.
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Negative
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I saw this film at the London Premiere, and I have to say - I didn't expect much, but I did expect something that was at least mildly entertaining.<br /><br />The original "Basic Instinct" was no great film and is still something of a "smut classic" but it was entertaining. I can recall countless times flipping through channels on TV on a late Friday or Saturday night having come across the movie and finding myself beginning to actually pay attention to it.<br /><br />However, this lame-brain, waaay-belated sequel has nothing. Is Sharon Stone still gorgeous? Well, let's put it this way -- for a 47-year-old, she's pretty hot. Is she as beautiful as she was in the original? No. She also has clearly had plastic surgery on her face, and her haircut in this movie is somewhat unappealing. She doesn't look as soft or genuine or innocent as she did in the original -- which is sort of the whole point of being an evil seductress, and whatnot.<br /><br />The rest of the performances range from bad to terrible -- and Michael Caton-Jones (a typically safe director -- one who doesn't always do great work but manages to make worthwhile movies) has officially delivered his first true turkey; a movie so bad people were laughing at certain moments that were intended to be serious.<br /><br />I hear the film went through multiple editing sessions, and it's very clear from the start. Nothing makes much sense. The whole plot is a cosmic mess and the ending -- oh my! Talk about stupid AND unbelievable. (Still predictable, though.) I saw "Gigli," I saw "Son of the Mask" -- and although I'm not looking to "smear" this film, I can say with my own authority (which you don't have to agree with at all, mind you) that I prefer both those films over this catastrophic failure.<br /><br />By the way, Stone left five minutes before the movie began and people in the theater began throwing things at the screen during a particularly outrageous and insulting scene inside an orgy-type nightclub.<br /><br />"Basic Instinct 2" -- basically, it stinks, too.
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Negative
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This was a blind buy used DVD. It totally killed a nice buzz I had going when I hit play.<br /><br />It's bubble-headed comedy, but it's um. squalid. The plot is ZANY!, but the characters do things to each other that are so petty and disturbed and conveniently contrived I ultimately found it depressing to watch.<br /><br />Maybe the box lead me to expect something more than an uneven, goofy caper film. (I know, I know, the quotes on the box & the Academy Award nomination mean nothing.)
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Negative
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.... this movie basks too much in its own innocence. It doesn't tell a story; it's more a big time snooze fest. While the actors are all personable, the story is so trite and goes nowhere. I think Victor Rasuk has great charisma, but deserves a real film from a real storyteller.
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Negative
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"The Crush" is a pleasant enough 40-something friends romantic chick flick for the first two-thirds or so, as it tries to be a Brit "Sex and the City". <br /><br />I particularly enjoyed the turn-around of the trophy young hunk whose character is not much fleshed out (come to think of it we didn't see all that much physical flesh of him either and Kenny Doughty is worth seeing more of). <br /><br />They sure make a lot more deal of young man/older woman than was made of the opposite in either version of "Sabrina" (neither movie do I like) or for that matter with the Douglas/Zeta-Jones or Dion/Svengali nuptials.<br /><br />Surrounding Andie MacDowell as an ex pat otherwise are welcome familiars from Brit dramas and comedies, such as tart-tongued Anna Chancellor. <br /><br />The plot twists towards the end feel very deus ex machina. But it wasn't until the credits came up at the end that I realized what might really be wrong. Just as with "Sex and the City," the writer/director is male, here first-timer Scot John McKay, and I think he really wanted to do a script about three gay men, probably about them coming out in relation to their lovers and at work (the characters are a school principal, a cop and a doctor), which would have been a better and more interesting movie. The working title for the film was "The Sad F*cker's Club" which would have made its parallels with the gay "Broken Hearts Club" even more obvious.<br /><br />(originally written 4/6/2002)
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Negative
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I think Phillip Kaufman read the cliff's Notes version of the Kundera novel and then set about making this film. Okay, of course it won't have the punch of the original. Kundera's novels are great because of his manipulation of the narrative concept, his ability to step in and out of stories he constructs. This film does not even try! The one dream sequence of Tereza's, so vital to the atmosphere of the book, is reworked and makes no sense whatsoever. Also, and this is perhaps a lesser point, Daniel Day-Lewis looks a lot like Ben Stiller in this (I know it's not really a valid complaint, but hey). A perfect example of the Hollywood-izing of otherwise fine literature.
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Negative
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Making the film as dark and visually fuzzy as possible in order to cover up the budget deficiencies is an often-used strategy in low-budget horror films, but this one takes it too far. It is SO poorly lit and murky (and it takes place almost entirely at night, to boot) that you often end up virtually looking at a black screen (although perhaps the bad video transfer may also have had something to do with that). Alas, "murky" is also the best word to describe the movie's plot. The filmmakers throw in diverse (and unoriginal) horror ideas without any semblance of logic, and halfway through you get the feeling that they just about abandoned the effort to make a good horror film; you know it when you see characters who are supposed to be in mortal danger (or, in some occasions, even dead) making small talk....(*1/2)
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Negative
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The title song for this movie ...........is the greatest free spirited ballad ever written! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! <br /><br />I first saw this movie back in 1978-79 when I first subscribed to cable. In 1979 cable was just starting to become common place in homes. (or at least that when it was becoming common here in Missouri).<br /><br />This might very well be the first movie I ever watched on the pay channel called "The Movie Channel" - which was called "The Star Channel" back then, they changed the name to "The Movie Channel" in the early 1980's........I received a free month of "The Star Channel" with my new cable subscription. "The Van" was one of the movies that was in heavy rotation on that network at that time.<br /><br />I remember watching this movie back then, and thinking it was a typical teen flick(along the same lines as other medium budget teen flicks) ...the ones where the plot revolves around nudity and parties.<br /><br />I totally forgot that this movie even existed until I recently seen this movie again after having not seeing it for decades( I found a copy of it on DVD for sale in cheap bin) I recognized it, and bought it for a mere $4.99.<br /><br />Seems like I had remembered this film being much better that it was(is). However watching it back then was a different experience than watching now(30+ years later).<br /><br />It was fun to see the kids listing to rock n roll music, smoking weed, and having sex in the back a fancy van(often all at the same time). This is what a good teen party movie should be.<br /><br />There isn't much of a plot other than the fact that the main character fantasizes about having sex with his arch rivals good looking girlfriend ...he blows all of his college savings money to purchase a tricked out Dodge Van(with shag carpet walls . mirrored ceiling and a water bed in it)to get her attention, and he eventually gets to have sex with her. But his arch rival finds out and comes looking for him (so that the two of them can settle their differences by drag racing their vans)....he and his arch rival end up wrecking both of their vans, and instead of stealing away his arch rivals girlfriend, he wins over the heart of a preppy(lesser attractive) girl that he half/ass dates through most of the movie and he decides he is happier/better off and the movie ends.<br /><br />the movie does have it's funny moments. But watching this movie 30+ years later, it becomes more of a trip down memory lane. Because I still can remember Pizza parlors, pinball arcades, It also brought back memories of cruising around a small town while we smoked pot as we would yell at good looking girls and hoping to get laid (sometimes I'd get lucky and get some decent looking girl to share a joint with me and we'd screw in the backseat afterwords, I also remember many of the songs in this move(when they were new)......this movie serves as a perfect time capsule for that era in those regards (brought back lots of memories)<br /><br />the one thing that is depicted in this movie that I honestly can not remember is ....I never remember a time when full sized vans were as popular as this film depicts them as being. I remember that era very well, and I don't young men going around wishing they had a van. Instead I remember young men in the 70's (self included) wanting a Pontiac Trans Am, Chevy Camaro or a hot rod Ford Mustang, but never a van. This movie makes it appear as if vans were most popular item going and that every young man wanted one(which just wasn't true of that era)
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Negative
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Okay so i found out about this movie and I watched the preview read almost all the reviews and was having a hard time debating whether I should watch it or not. Before i even watched the movie i was emotionally weird on it. i was so unsure if i was going to watch this and be disturbed for like a long time. So i choose to risk it and watched it and heres what i thought: The beginning started off fine for me. It seemed to be heading in a decent direction. Got past the rape scene and i couldn't figure why people were so disturbed or bored by the movie. Don't get me wrong the rape scene was just as sad and scary but it didn't really bother me to a dramatic point. Then as the middle came in i understood the boring stuff that was going on. There was like 5 minutes shots of nothing but people walking around saying or showing nothing! its one thing to have a shot where a person is showing some kind of emotion but this movie didn't have that. It had about 3 of these pointless scenes, where you see the main character Maya kind of get out of control but it didn't show it right making me want to fast forward. Then when she engaged in the hardcore partying it wasn't so boring but still a little dull. Oh and as a note Rosario Dawson still did a great job. Okay moving on so finally after an hour of pointlessness to the middle the revenge comes to Maya's attention. Thats where it got disturbing. I didn't feel bad for him or nothing he got what he deserved but the whole scene was really disturbing and i just felt all eck after it. I cant really tell you whether or not to watch this movie because its so...i don't know i cant find a word to sum it up. But if you choose to watch it just don't be unsuprised.
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Negative
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It's not the most well made slasher movies of all time, but for what it is, it's pretty amusing. The plot is lame but the kills are not too bad. I have to be honest, if you don't follow the bands that are featured in this film, you wont find this film as funny as those who do. I knew someone who saw this film and was really disappointed because of the poor quality of the film but you have to understand that it was made in the spare time of being on tour, in between playing to moshing kids and drinkin' with friends backstage...it's not made to be taken seriously. It's ubber cheese at it's punk best and with over 100 kills,most of which are ultra gory, it's a fun movie to have friends over to watch, drink and be merry!
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Negative
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Watching this again recently, I found it heartwarming to see the way they sincerely tried to bring the book to the screen, even if the shoestring budget and hammy actors meant inevitable failure. By any objective measure this was a disaster, but I found it easy to imagination how good a Lord of the Rings movie could be if someone was to make one sincerely - and with the money to employ the most talented artists and script writers. Unfortunately, thanks to Jackson, that will not be possible for a long time.<br /><br />Watching this movie left me with the impression that with any sort of budget at all, then this story simply couldn't be stuffed up. Fantasy just provides so many opportunities for making an interesting film. There were many moments in this film that were potentially more interesting than the way that Peter Jackson did it, although of course you always have to use your imagination due to the poor execution. The way they tried to show the wraith world from Frodo's point of view for example. Or the way that Galadriel showed Sam what was happening back home for another.<br /><br />Another thing I really appreciated in this version - the silent moments. There were moments when dialog was spoken with no background music against a still back-drop. Compare that to the grandiose swooping camera of the Jackson films, and the intrusive score which seemed designed to stress how each and every scene was the most poignant and powerful scene we had ever watched. Jackson's films were full of their own importance, this was quieter and a lot more modest.<br /><br />Jackson and co hit this with more than US$270 million dollars in production costs, at least $90 million dollars more for marketing, a massive tax break from the NZ government, and also gained massive savings from filming in NZ not the USA. However, despite the marketing claims, the intention to be faithful was never there. This is well documented. Philippa Boyens said as much in an interview, when she said they deliberately didn't re-read the books before writing the script. Jackson also stated that they originally intended to make a fantasy film "along the lines of" the lord of the rings, and that the one he really wanted to do was Return of the King, because it had a lot of battles but no character development.<br /><br />In contrast, this film tried to be more true. Of course a lot of things were wrong, the acting was awful and pretty much sunk everything, and the pace was too fast. Naturally they cut a lot, and adapted other scenes, and for this they deserve credit. While Jackson added a lot of action scenes that served no plot purpose, Bakshi cut book scenes which did nothing to advance the plot anyway. There's actually a curious similarity between the structure of the Jackson and Bakshi films near the beginning - in that they both deviate from the original books in the same way - although of course some of this could be coincidence.<br /><br />This was not a good film, but the potential was there. Bakshi said in an interview to the Onion AV club that only animation could do the lord of the rings justice. His version didn't work, but he might have been right.
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Negative
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Maximally manipulative Anabel Sims (Betsy Drake) sets out to trap her ideal man, aided by her co-worker, Julie. Esteemed pediatrician Madison Brown (Cary Grant) goes from bemused to betrothed in the space of 90 minutes on film, but to the viewer it's all eternity. Can a movie receive less than one star? This one is a prime candidate.
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Negative
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I don't normally feel much of an incentive to comment on films I don't like, but in a case like this one, I just have to say something. This movie is terrible, illogical, and stupid. There are so many flaws in the storytelling that I don't even feel obliged to elaborate on because it's time for me to move on from this experience. The most annoying point is, however, that at no point in the film does anyone explain whether the motivations for Bacon's character's madness are due to a power trip or a physiological reaction to his condition.<br /><br />Granted the special effects are impressive, and in the past Paul Verhoeven has done some good stuff (the director's cut of Robocop on DVD is great). However, this movie is stupid and generally doesn't come near to explaining the point or technical aspect of the subject matter, and instead settles for predictable action without any enjoyment.<br /><br /> In short, as many other reviews here say (wish I had read them before...) - Stay away from this film!
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Negative
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What a horrible, horrible film. The worst collection of cliches I have seen in a long time. Not that I saw much. I left the theatre screaming after about 40 minutes in search of a stiff drink to soothe my nerves. Meryl Streep was awful as usual. How many hurt and tortured expressions can 1 person have? Aidan Quinn's talents were - as so often - totally wasted. And who told Gloria Estefan she could act? Trying to be polically correct this movie still enforces racial stereotypes. (Brave inexperienced lonely music teacher teaches underprivilegded kids violin in poor neighbourhood school). The kids weren't even cute! Just written in to suit the appalling script. Aaargh! Wes Craven really made me cringe for once. real horror this one!
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Negative
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Who were they kidding with this? There was just too much in this film that was hard to digest. Right from when Arjun (Ajay Devgan) unknowingly wishes death on his father to when he arrives in London with his uncle(played by Om Puri) only to abandon him minutes later. The only problem with that theory is that anybody who has ever passed through London Heathrow knows that such a fête would be impossible to pull off and especially not by an Indian. But the film problems do not end there, there's the issue of the two main leads (Salman Khan and Ajay Devgan) passing as rock-stars on the verge of achieving their dreams. I mean yeah we saw success come to Susan Boyle (a woman in the UK achieving her dreams after age 50) but that was a rare case. It was really hard for me to suspend my disbelief because I felt that the casting of Salman and Ajay was just ill-conceived. They would never cast Madhuri Dixit and Sridevi to play the same roles so why should we be forced to watch Ajay Devgan and Salman Khan (men well into their 40s) prance around desperately trying to hang on to their 20s? Let's not even talk about the most self-conscious actress on screen today, Asin. This is her second film (that I have seen) and she is just hopeless as an actress, so conscious of her looks that she only concerns herself with looking good and voguing for the camera rather than giving in a good acting performance. It's just hard to believe that she turned down all those other movie roles to star in this fluff and then be so fluffy as an actress, nothing to write home about at all. And to top all of that, the film just boringly dragged on. There's nothing special about it at all, trust me you will predict every clichéd thing that is going to happen in it.
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Negative
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Hollywood's misguided obsession with sequels has resulted in more misfires than hits. For every "Godfather II," there are dozens of "More American Graffiti's," "Stayin' Alives," and "Grease 2's." While the original "Grease" is not a great film, the 1977 adaptation of the long-running Broadway hit does have songs evocative of the 1960's, energetic choreography, and an appealing cast. When Paramount began work on a follow-up, the producers came up nearly empty on every aspect that made the original a blockbuster.<br /><br />Fortunately for moviegoers, Michelle Pfeiffer survived this experience and evidently learned to read scripts before signing contracts. Her talent and beauty were already evident herein, and Pfeiffer does seem to express embarrassment at the humiliating dance routines and tuneless songs that she is forced to perform. Maxwell Caulfield, however, lacks even the skill to express embarrassment, and his emotions run the gamut from numb to catatonic. What romantic interest, beyond hormones, could the cool sassy Pfeiffer have in the deadpan Caulfield? That dull mystery will linger long after the ludicrous luau finale fades into a bad memory. Only cameos by veterans such as Eve Arden, Connie Stevens, and Sid Caesar have any wit, although Lorna Luft does rise slightly above the lame material.<br /><br />Reviewers have complained that, because "Grease 2" is always compared to the original, the movie comes up lacking. However, even taken on its own terms, the film is a clunker. After a frenetic opening number, which evidently exhausted the entire cast, the energy dissipates. With few exceptions, the original songs bear little resemblance to the early 1960's, and the only nostalgia evoked is for "Our Miss Brooks" and "Sid Caesar's Comedy Hour." The jokes fall flat, and the choreography in a film directed by choreographer Patricia Birch is clumsy to be polite. However, worse films have been inflicted on audiences, and inept sequels will be made as long as producers seek to milk a quick buck from rehashing blockbusters. Unfortunately, "Grease 2" is not even unintentionally funny. Instead, the film holds the viewer's attention like a bad train wreck. Just when all the bodies seem to have been recovered, the next scene plunges into even worse carnage.
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Negative
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This movie is a disgrace to the Major League Franchise. I live in Minnesota and even I can't believe they dumped Cleveland. (Yes I realize at the time the real Indians were pretty good, and the Twins had taken over their spot at the bottom of the American League, but still be consistent.) Anyway I loved the first Major League, liked the second, and always looked forward to the third, when the Indians would finally go all the way to the series. You can't tell me this wasn't the plan after the second film was completed. What Happened? Anyways if your a true fan of the original Major League do yourself a favor and don't watch this junk.
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Negative
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This movie's heart was in the right place, no matter where its brain was.<br /><br />"Attack" is basically a spoof a la "Airplane!" (two years before the fact - nice going.) of what happens when vegetables, or in this case fruits, attack.<br /><br />Through all manner of film magic (stop motion, papier-mache tomatoes on skateboards, reverse filming, people watching off-screen tomatoes, people throwing basketball-sized tomatoes at the on-screen actors), the tomatoes do indeed attack everyone in their leafy grasp. <br /><br />Then, it's up to Mason Dixon (Miller) and a group of spies I wouldn't wish on any government's side to save the day. Of course there's a meddling reporter (Taylor) who pops in at the worst times, dancing and singing Army soldiers, Japanese scientists with dubbed-in voices, some guy dragging around a parachute and a samurai sword...and oh yeah, the San Diego Chicken before he made it big.<br /><br />The gags here aren't all that great. In fact, you could probably make up better yourself after watching these. Some of the dialogue is inutterably bad ("Please pass the ketchup" - not something to say in front of tomatoes.) and as far as "Puberty Love" goes...well, I can't blame the tomatoes for shriveling up on hearing it.<br /><br />What's good about it? Well, I liked the theme song and the beginning credits, and there was a scene with four people on the phone at once that was pretty well executed. ...that's about it.<br /><br />Three stars. Not a "Killer" comedy, but it tries.<br /><br />Rock on, Peace.
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Negative
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As the number of Video Nasties I've yet to see dwindles, this little pile of garbage popped up on my "to rent" list when I saw it was available.<br /><br />The premise involves a fashion model or something being kidnapped and taken into the jungle to be held for ransom by a motley crew of idiots. Some other goof gets hired to bring her back and is given a sack of money to use as a bargaining chip, though if he returns with the girl and all the money, he gets a significant cut. He's brought a helicopter and pilot with him and, wow, that pilot is one of the worst actors EVER! Granted, they are all totally terrible and the dubbing will make you cry blood. After stealing away into the jungle, we learn that nearby is a cannibal cult whose flesheating earthbound god wanders the woods like a human King Kong looking for tribeswomen to ravage and devour. Now, this fellow is just a naked guy with some of the worst makeup ever, ping-pong balls for eyes and that's pretty much it. His growls and groans are an everpresent feature on the soundtrack, and I found myself muting much of those scenes.<br /><br />Oh, did I forget to mention the almost constant nudity? This is probably the main reason this film was banned, though there is one specific scene, about one second long, where the god attacks a girl and pulls her guts out, but it's not a redeeming factor for gore fans. Also, Jess Franco goes beyond the usual T and A and shows lengthy close-ups of female genitals, and, sadly, male as well. So, if you want "fair" in terms of exploitation, you got it.<br /><br />I can't recommend this trash to anyone. It's not even the good bad movie. It's just atrociously padded trash that only a Video Nasty fan will probably view and even then, if you are making your way through the list, leave this for the very last. If you watch it first, you may get the notion that this is the norm for the list, which is certainly not true.
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Negative
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This is an abysmal piece of story-telling. It is about an hour into the movie before we have much idea of what it is supposed to be about; the characters often mumble inaudibly; actions frequently seem to have no relation to each other; nobody seems to be concerned about who actually murdered the girl; a pair of spooky kids go swimming in waters that seem threatening but nothing happens; the Irishman gets punched in the face by one of his buddies for no apparent reason ... to continue would be as boring as the movie itself. The only half-entertaining element is the landscape photography; but anyone could point a camera at the Australian outback a get memorable shots. Overall - dreary, incoherent, pretentious - and downright annoying for wasting so much of the viewer's time.
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Negative
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I've got a question for those who thought of this idea. Why? What made them think to make a second movie of this. If memory serves, didn't Cinderella end with "They all lived happily ever after"? I'm pretty sure it did, or it was implied. Wait a minute, if they all lived happily ever after, how could there be a sequel? Unless they were trying to make the most boring story in history, there couldn't be a sequel. I mean sure, they could have Cinderella singing about nonsense for two hours, but why? A movie that ends in "happily ever after" can not have a sequel; if it does then they don't live happily ever after! Something's got to go wrong which causes problems with the first ending! Why? That's not right, it's evil. That's my final word on the matter.
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Negative
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It's not just that this is a bad movie; it's not only that four of the "best" Mexican movie makers are in this film; and it's not only that the script is terrible. It's just that...this movie sucks...big time. This people are wasting money in terrible scripts. It's supposed to make a criticism about Mexican society but we're fed up with this kind of films. Is bad language supposed to be funny? I don't get it. Mexican cinema is in big trouble if this kind of movies are going to continue playing (and being written and produced).<br /><br />Please, don't think this kind of movies are well received in Mexico: We hate them and they don't reflect us.
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Negative
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Sometimes laughter in the middle of a horror film is a signal of its greatness. I remember the nervous laughter from the audience in the re-release of The Excorcist
really nervous laughter. It punctuated just how freaked out we all were watching the voice of Satan coming out of a 12 year old girl. In the case of the 2006 remake of the 1972 cult classic The Wicker Man however, it made me think that this new Wickerman is about as scary as the South Park character, Scuzzlebut, the friendly forest monster with TV's Patrick Duffy for a leg and a celery stalk for an arm who's favorite hobby is weaving wicker baskets.<br /><br />3 years ago a friend of mine in Hollywood told me that he heard that Nicolas Cage was going to do a remake of the film. I started laughing and my friend (Keith) got mad at me touting Nicolas Cage as a great actor. I just didn't think that he could pull it off and unfortunately for moviegoers I was right. Gone is the realness, the outstanding original music, the originality, the creepiness and the wonderfully powerful dialogue. Instead we have horror movie clichés, affected acting and changes to the storyline that make any believability fall apart. Like many of the countless Hollywood remakes we have been inundated with lately this feels like we are watching 4th graders on a playground "playing Wickerman".<br /><br />The original film takes place on a remote Scottish Isle where a Scottish police officer is lured there to find a missing young girl named Rowan Morrison. In the new spin a California cop (Cage) is lured to an island of the coast of Washington state by his ex-girlfriend to find her missing daughter. She sends a photo and the missing daughter looks exactly like a young girl he tried to save in a fiery crash not long ago. The crash still haunts him in part because the girl's body was never found. Yet even after he gets a letter with her picture in it that connection is completely cast aside as he heads north, alone, to help his ex-girlfriend find her daughter. He arrives to find an island full of actors pretending to be the descendants of Wiccans, many of whom seem like they didn't get call backs for roles in The Village. And like The Village it isn't long before you realize there is nothing to be afraid of here. Not even the cloudy eyed blind sisters who speak in unison.<br /><br />I think that the opportunity in Hollywood to make great amounts of money on a film often comes at great expense to the artistry. I think someone like Nicolas Cage who is in so many films these days loses touch with the magic that film can be when it gets to the point where he has a personal chef on the set preparing his snacks. We needed a bad re-make of the Wickerman like we needed yet another '9-11' movie. I'm starting to wonder if Nicolas changed his surname from Coppola because he wanted to or because he was pleaded with to do so.
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Negative
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First of all, this movie reminded me of the old movies I used to have to watch in religion class in school. That's NOT a good thing. Basically, it's just a preachy and pretentious piece of filth, just like the terrible "Left Behind" series. I'm not offended by religious movies... but I am offended when these religious movies just happen to be extremely awful. I would just like to be able to say nice things about a christian movie but it doesn't look like that will happen any time soon. I bet if you gave the bible thumpers a decent budget, they still wouldn't be able to come up with anything good. Just avoid this one. Also, the fact that the "American Family Association" (basically, Reverend Wildmon's lackies) beam about this film on their website is another reason to make me hate it. In fact, after I viewed this, I went home and watched my copy of David Cronenberg's NC-17 rated "Crash". Forgive me father for I have sinned. Hahahahaha!
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Negative
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This film was not nearly as much of a chore as I expected it to be. There are a few seconds of brilliance in this somewhat idiotic hardcore UFO conspiracy paranoia-fest. Most of the acting is mediocre, but fairly typical for 1970s-style stuff replete with pregnant pauses. A photographer and a model witness some strange goings-on in the woods and soon fall victim to these same goings-on. Flying saucers are spotted, more people disappear - but is it the aliens or our own government's ultra-secret group of cover-up guys? Soon enough, a reporter and a "UFOlogist" (apparently modeled on the character of the writer-director) are drawn into this unraveling fiasco and become the target of the ultra-secret agents who are as menacing as they are improbable and witless. Then the fun really begins.<br /><br />The movie, predictably, makes about as much sense as the average UFO conspiracy theory, but should be commended for taking itself so seriously. The camera work is OK for a low-budget film, the pacing is pretty good, the script is silly and absurd, and there are continuity issues which are fun to look out for. What are the few seconds of brilliance I mentioned? Honestly, I can't say much you without writing a spoiler. Suffice to say that the end of the film is, at least, worth fast-forwarding to if you can't take the middle.
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Negative
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If you want to checkout a good Jason Scott Lee film, I recommend the following:<br /><br />Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story<br /><br />Rapa Nui<br /><br />"Timecop 2: The Berlin Decision" is an awful film. Awful production values. Awful acting. Awful script. I would not recommend this film to be watched by anyone who seriously believes that tripe like this is quality entertainment or advances Asian American awareness in Hollywood (This film does neither.).<br /><br />I would at the very least say that this film is passable entertainment on a rainy day if you ever come across it while channel surfing. If you are curious, perhaps a rental from Netflix, but this film is definitely not for keeps.<br /><br />If you are one of the few people who watched this film as a means to raise your Asian American film awareness, and came away disappointed, then I recommend the following films for your personal viewing. These are well-written films with high production values that feature a talented cast of Asian American actors:<br /><br />Better Luck Tomorrow <br /><br />Mulan
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Negative
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Absolutely one of the worst movies I've seen in a long time! It starts off badly and just deteriorates. Katherine Heigl is woefully miscast in a Lolita role and Leo Grillo manfully struggles with what is essentially a cardboard cutout character. The only cast-member with any enthusiasm is Tom Sizemore, who hams it up as a villain and goes completely overboard with his role. The script is dire, the acting horrible and it has plot holes big enough to drive a double-decker bus through! It is also the most sexist movie I have ever seen! Katherine Heigl's character is completely unsympathetic. She's seen as an evil, wanton seductress who lures the poor, innocent married man to cheat on his wife. It is implied throughout the movie that she's underage, and the message that accompanies that plot-strand just beggars belief! At the end, she isn't even able to redeem herself by shooting the man who's obviously (ha!) become demented with rage and guilt, but the script allows him to kill himself, thereby redeeming himself in the eyes of males everywhere. Horrible. Don't waste your time.
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Negative
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I was at first disgusted with director Sun-Woo Jang because I had felt that he cheated me. Jang had the potential to create a strong, deeply emotional film about sex and its effects on people, but instead chose to focus his strength on the pornography element more than the actual human element. I couldn't see the characters at first and his sloppy introduction which blended both realism and cinema together was amateurish at best
yet this film remained in my mind for days after I viewed it. What stayed with me wasn't the story, it wasn't the characters, nor was it the apparent pornographic nature of the film, but the transition that Jang demonstrated between Y and J. If you watch this film carefully, you will see that both begin in an exploration phase of their relationship, eager to jump into the unknown, but not quite certain the next step. As they continue to meet, exploring new avenues of pleasure, they continually jump between the aggressor and the aggressed. Jang initially explores the idea that J is the one that in control of the situation, then hauntingly, the reversal happens when J becomes obsessed with Y. It is a very small change, and due to the graphic content of this film, it can easily be missed, but it is there. It becomes apparently clear near the end when J cannot live with Y, as their meetings become less frequent, and J attempts to become a part of normal society. This was a huge and very exciting element to this film to see right before your eyes, but alas, it was the only element of this film worth viewing.<br /><br />I will ignore those that speak of this film as nothing more than pornographic, because there are human elements at the core of this film, as underdeveloped as they are, they are there. It is a film about a facet of our lives that is very rarely explored in cinema or talked about in the papers. What happens behind closed doors is never known
or so we should believe. While the act itself does becomes repetitive after a bit, director Jang tries to change it up a bit with some constantly changing scenery. Our characters are continually moving from hotel room to hotel room to best quench their thirst for each other's flesh. This is fun at first, but again, Jang's repetitive streak seems to make it feel boring than exciting. This leads me to the biggest issue that I had with this film. Jang had a great story with Gojitmal, but where he failed (outside of the obvious choice to focus directly on the pornographic side) was that he took scenes, repeated them time and again, without changing in front of us to allow us to get to know the characters. Where was Jang going with this movie? Did he want the sex to tell the stories, or did he believe the characters would? He failed in this sense because by the end of the film we know so little about Y and J that we could care less how they resolve themselves. The ending seems almost random at best as Jang attempts to create a final resolution for our two, absolute unknowns, of this film. I have to give Jang some credit for trying, but not much. He attempted to create some sub-stories that would create the personal element that we were lacking, but they just couldn't congeal well together. Y's brother and J's wife were those plot points, but again, due to him focusing so strongly on the sexual element, these stronger sub-stories became un-rememberable and down-right dull. Maybe it was just how I viewed this film, but outside of the sexual scenes, nothing else worked together. We knew nothing about J and Y and that is why Gojitmal failed.<br /><br />Finally, I would like to say that this film could have benefited from having a strong score or a daftly remote music genre element to it to bring us, the viewers, closer to the emotions being felt by J and Y. From what I can remember, and I am trying to push this film far from my mind, I don't remember any musical undertones. Gojitmal may have been a stronger film if Jang either stylized it with music or done something to allude towards our character's beings. While I understand that he wanted the sex to speak for itself, there was just a technical element missing from this film that may have quenched a stronger desire for more. Technically, this was a poor film. Obviously an independent film in nature, it felt more like director Jang was trying to make symbolic references out of nothing instead of your typical independent of this nature. I didn't see as much of a social message or human element like mentioned above, I just felt like he threw this film together over the course of two weeks and understood that the sex would sell it enough. This was no Larry Clark production; this was sub-par and definitely needed some further technical clicks to develop it stronger than the final release! <br /><br />Overall, I think I could have liked this film and there were smaller elements that I did enjoy, but I felt this film was rushed, repetitive, and played too much towards the taboos instead of breaking them. The obvious pitfalls of this film can be seen by the last scene of this film when we are privy to how the title of this film was conceived. Our characters were uneventful, our story was underdeveloped, and we could have used something memorable to make what was happening between Y and J into something more symbolic than sex. To me, Jang was trying too much to capture art house meets pornographic
and it failed miserably. This was not a film worth the time and effort that it took to make.<br /><br />Grade: ** out of *****
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Negative
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There are only two movies I would give a 1/10 to, this stinker and "The Man who Fell to Earth." I remember seeing Protocol at a theater in the early 80s when I was in high school. The script is insulting to anyone (including a high school student's) intelligence. It completely lost me with the "hillarious" gag of someone getting shot in the butt. Goldie Hawn is supposed to be charming but comes across as vapid and moronic. Then there are offensive stereotypes about Arabs, followed by Goldie winning over everyone by spouting populist dribble. The acting was terrible, including Goldie Hawn's. I could not stand to see another movie she was in until IMO she redeemed herself in Everyone Says I Love You. This is the kind of movie you make if you want to put no effort into screenplay writing. The worst.
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Negative
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Not even Bob Hope, escorted by a raft of fine character actors, can save this poorly written attempt at wartime comedy, as his patented timing has little which which to work. The plot involves a Hollywood film star named Don Bolton (Hope), and his attempt to evade military service at the beginning of World War II, followed by his enlistment by mistake in a confused attempt to court a colonel's daughter (Dorothy Lamour). Bolton's agent, played by Lynne Overman, and his assistant, portrayed by Eddie Bracken, enlist with him and the three are involved in various escapades regarding training exercises, filmed in the Malibu, California, hills. Paramount budgeted handsomely for this effort, employing some of its top specialists, but direction by the usually reliable David Butler was flaccid, and this must be attributed to a missing comedic element in the scenario. A shift toward the end of the film to create an opportunity for heroism by Bolton is still-born with poor stunt work and camera action in evidence. Oddly, Lynne Overman is given the best lines and this veteran master of the sneer does very well by them. Dorothy Lamour looks lovely and acts nicely, as well, and it is ever a delight to see and hear Clarence Kolb, as her father, whose voice is unique on screen or radio, but there is little they can do to save this film, cursed as it is with an error in script assignment.
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Negative
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I'll make this short and sweet....this movie sucked!!!!!!<br /><br />I watched part 1 earlier today and thought it was one of the greatest films ever, gave it 9 out of 10 stars. So I thought perhaps part 2 and 3 would be good sequels, I was wrong. This movie bored me to death and was so different from the first one, it had the plot continue and thats it. It was like bad outtakes from part one or something.<br /><br />I love Walken, but I felt sorry for him here. I was so happy about Glenn Danzig being in this film, but don't blink you'll miss him. There was a full cast full of crappy actors and people I don't like such as Eric Roberts and Jennifer Beals. However, it was a breath of fresh air to see Ethan Embry, he's one of the funniest people on earth.<br /><br />This movie will make you like the first one a little less, so don't watch it because you feel you owe it to yourself, being a fan of part 1. I am gonna wait a few days before I watch part 3 and I pray it is better than this crap.<br /><br />The last scene of the movie with the lightning was one of the most beautiful things ever shown on film. Fast forward or skip to that if you can't stomach the first part.<br /><br />1 out of 10 stars - this was awful!
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Negative
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Despite the rave reviews this flick has garnered in New Zealand, any hype surrounding the production is sadly undeserved. Apart from a clichés-only plot, the movie is let down by some weak acting, accents, and overall lack of tension.<br /><br />Whilst having the overall look of a big budget (for NZ), the feel is decidedly small-town Kiwi...<br /><br />Has anyone not seen The Brothers ?? ( http://imdb.com/title/tt0250274/ ) Those who have will pick the similarities straightaway....I've heard comments that scenes like the boys playing basketball etc were shot to poke fun at the clichéd "boys talking crap", but it comes across as forced...<br /><br />I believe Oscar Keightley sees himself as deeply ironic, but again his delivery always seems merely vaguely self conscious.<br /><br />Those who have any doubts left at all that Samoans-living-in-NZ culture has been deeply , hopefully not permanently ,affected by American speech , culture, and everything inbetween will certainly have their minds made up at the end of this movie.<br /><br />Robbie magasiva always looks good on screen , but is let down by the script..<br /><br />It always rubs me up the wrong way when a "comedy" has scenes that are set up in such an obvious way, you are left feeling like having a good groan at the clichéd punchline - see the wanna be white boy...<br /><br />I know someone who found this movie hilarious -however, that person has the brains of a tadpole, and would struggle to spell her name if offered a million dollars....<br /><br />That kinda sums up the mentality of this flick , OK but not great , fun but not funny.....Wake up NZ - this is NOT a 5 star movie despite all the glowing (middle class white guilt ?? :-) ) reviews....<br /><br />My advice ? if you watch it, get drunk first!!!
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Negative
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Movies like these are to the originals what Album Oriented Rock stations are to what music used to be like - repetitive, boring, and drained of all the original energy by a committee of corporate drones. I AM glad that Aragorn wasn't typecast as an expectant psycho by this P.O.S. Go back and watch the 1971 version, count the things that would NEVER be included in a modern version, and thank whatever deity you worship that someone somewhere in the distant past had the balls to write and shoot an original concept movie that wasn't based on someone else's ideas, and wasn't passed through a corporate board before it saw the light of day.
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Negative
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Oh man, I know what your thinking: "With a title like that, I can't go wrong!" Uh yes you can. I too, loved the title, but man I hated the stupid kid that played "Satan's little helper" I hated the mom too, and the sister/daughter, and her boyfriend - I hated all those people! Man, it was agony watching this sometimes! The ONLY reason this doesn't get 1/10 is becuz condsidering the low budget, they did OK. But oh man did I hate those actors, so stupid! I knew it was going to be bad, I guess they saved a lot of money on just using halloween masks for the killer, and the Jesus costume at the end was really stupid too. Oh the agony, do not watch!
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Negative
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I bought this film on DVD so I could get an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000. Thankfully, Mike, Crow, and Tom Servo are watchable, because the film itself is not. Although there is a plot, a story one can follow, and a few actors that can act, there isn't anything else. The movie was so boring, I have firmly confirmed that I will never watch it again without Tom, Crow and Mike. As summarized above, however, it was better than the film featured in the MST3K episode that preceded it; Mitchell.
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Negative
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I started watching this movie expecting some barely tolerable Hammer horror film wannabe... and I wasn't far off. There's a fair amount of glimpsed gore, and they threw in lots of nudity, but the latter half of the movie presents a few ironic twists. Holy cow, they actually put a little thought into the story, and didn't completely fall into the predictable stuff one expected at the outset. And dare I say it, some of the "gratuitous" nudity wasn't so gratuitous after all, because it fit in with the story and setting.<br /><br />Don't get me wrong, it's still overall a bad movie, but as bad movies go, it's a shade more intelligent than the REALLY horrible tripe like Mesa of Lost Women and Robot Monster.
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Negative
| null | null |
I sat glued to the screen, riveted, yawning, yet keeping an attentive eye. I waited for the next awful special effect, or the next ridiculously clichéd plot item to show up full force, so I could learn how not to make a movie.<br /><br />It seems when they set out to make this movie, the crew watched every single other action/science-fiction/shoot-em-up/good vs. evil movie ever made, and saw cool things and said: "Hey, we can do that." For example, the only car parked within a mile on what seems like a one way road with a shoulder not meant for parking, is the one car the protagonist, an attractive brunette born of bile, is thrown on to. The car blows to pieces before she even lands on it. The special effects were quite obviously my biggest beef with this movie. But what really put it in my bad books was the implausibility, and lack of reason for so many elements! For example, the antagonist, a flying demon with the ability to inflict harm in bizarre ways, happens upon a lone army truck transporting an important VIP. Nameless security guys with guns get out of the truck, you know they are already dead. Then the guy protecting the VIP says "Under no circumstances do you leave this truck, do you understand me?" He gets out to find the beast that killed his 3 buddies, he gets whacked in an almost comically cliché fashion. Then for no apparent reason, defying logic, convention, and common sense, the dumb ass VIP GETS OUT OF THE TRUCK!!! A lot of what happened along the course of the movie didn't make sense. Transparent acting distanced me from the movie, as well as bad camera-work, and things that just make you go: "Wow, that's incredibly cheesy." Shiri Appleby saved the movie from a 1, because she gave the movie the one element that always makes viewers enjoy the experience, sex appeal.
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Negative
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This was filmed back-to-back with the 1992 re-make of Conan Doyle's famous novel 'The Lost World'. And it shows.<br /><br />The film starts promisingly enough, with a ruthless organization intending to exploit the lost world and Challenger et al returning to defend the prehistoric plateau, but then things go downhill. Everybody is stranded on the plateau and we're left with a feeble, boring, over-length rehash of the first film.<br /><br />The dinosaurs (who are hardly ever seen) are just laughable. Are we expected to take that cuddly toy that's supposed to be an ankylosaur seriously? And the tyrannosaur seems rooted to the spot.<br /><br />Do yourself a favor and get hold of the 1925 silent version of the Lost World. Unbelievably in this age of CGI and other advanced effects, the twenties version is the best and will remain so until somebody finally decides to do a decent re-make.
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Negative
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"Fly Me To The Moon" has to be the worst animated film I've seen in a LONG TIME. That's saying something since I have taken my son to see every animated release for the last 4 years now. The story is to be generous...trite. The voice acting is atrocious, Too cute sounding. The humor is of the Romper Room variety. The animation is passable for a Nickolodeon type of cartoon but this is being released on the big screen not cable television.<br /><br />It gets a 2 only because of it's OK 3-D visuals. Some of the scenes had a mildly stimulating image but We've seen much better in the past. I also question the insistence of the filmmakers to have characters fly away from the screen rather than into it in most of the scenes. While that is interesting at first it became tiresome after the 3rd or 4th time. It seemed to smack of indifference to me on the part of the creators.<br /><br />I will say this though, It had a pretty cool soundtrack. And for the record my son wasn't too crazy about it either. Bad movie.
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Negative
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