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544,330 | 562,732 | 1,139,668 | 3 | The Exorcism of Casey Beldon . . . | January is not such a good time for movies . The holiday season is over people are getting back to work and school and their normal lives , and the movie studios seem to take this opportunity to unload all their half-witted movies that probably no one is going to be interested in anyway . It seems that way every time I see a movie like The Unborn , anyway . This thing is so thin and weak it's like a cinematic version of weak tea , and weak tea is not something you want your audience to be thinking about while they're suffering through your scary movie . Brought to us by the director of Blade : Trinity ( and pretty much nothing else ) , The Unborn is the story of a girl who had a twin that died in utero because her umbilical cord had wrapped around his neck in the womb and strangled him , and she didn't become aware of it until decades later when his evil spirit decided that he was ready to be born now . Sadly , the movie relies almost entirely on endless shots of creepy kids with deadpan expressions and , occasionally , colored contact lenses . But don't go thinking the clichés stop there , the movie is so jam-packed with cheap horror techniques that it almost feels like an educational experience in everything to avoid doing in making a scary movie . The extreme close-up of the mutated babyface and the sudden screeching noise when the eyes flip open used to be a pretty scary effect . I can't remember when that was , it's been a number of decades now , but there was a time in the distant past when that shot had a cool effect . Now it's been so overdone and copied that it's no loner anything more than a big red flag that the movie you're watching is wasting your time ! In the movie's defense , it has a clear ability to create a tense atmosphere . Much of it is beautifully photographed , and the combination of the slow tracking shots and the moody music give a feeling of unease which , in a better movie , could easily pave the way for a genuinely freaky horror show . But unfortunately , every bit of the rest of the movie is as wispy and uninteresting as a pair of old underwear . Odette Yustman stars as the afflicted Casey Beldon , faced with a terrible situation in which she is slowly losing her soul to an invading demon , back for revenge for that one pesky sibling rivalry that they had before they were born . Poor Casey finds out at the most vulnerable time that she inadvertently killed her own brother , which has to have some kind of devastating effect on a person , even one who is not in such an , ah , emotional state as Casey is in . Oh , and speaking of emotional states , there is a point where Casey is absolutely certain that she is being pursued by an evil spirit , and even when the bizarre things that have been happening to her seem to leave no room for any other explanation , her lunkhead boyfriend says this to her ? " I don't think you're crazy , I just think you're hormonal . " A word of advice , gentlemen ? I don't claim to be any kind of all-knowing expert about the wonders and mysteries of the fairer sex , but I tend to have a natural feeling that if your girlfriend is upset about something , the suggestion that it's " that time of the month " is generally a pretty efficient way to make yourself single . Or bruised and swollen somewhere . And if she's upset because she's being pursued by demons , she may just cut to the chase and kill you . Besides , it's clear that Casey needs a lot of help , because not only does she make all of those breathtakingly stupid decisions that horror movie cannon-fodder generally make , but she also begins to appear more and more crazy to the people around her as she begins to believe more and more that this demonic possession thing is happening to her for real . Of course , making her look crazy is neither surprising nor interesting . It's an ancient horror movie technique intended to make the supernatural element seem more real by giving us someone to relate to ? the people who are looking at this girl like she's a total lunatic . Unfortunately , when the character is so undeveloped and uninteresting that it's impossible to care about her , this crazy element does nothing for the suspense . Except maybe reverse it . There are certainly some interesting visuals in the movie , even some of the clichés ( a good many of them involving the old bathroom mirror scare ) are older than the hills but at least look pretty cool . The spider-walk is lifted directly out of The Exorcist ( and it's such an obvious plagiarism that I'm going to go ahead and chalk it up to an homage ) , and there are some pretty clever manifestations of the demon , but the movie is so slow and plodding and full of half-assed performances ( even the great Gary Oldman is totally dismissable here ) that it feels like even the movie is sleeping through itself . And it doesn't help matters that the climax of the film is an exorcism that consists of a lot of strobe lights and big fans in a low-rent studio . Believe it or not , I didn't hate the movie , but I'm a long-time horror fan and I have a tendency to enjoy horror movies that most other people would punch me for suggesting . But whether or not you enjoy the lower half of the horror genre , it's definitely true that there are quite a few much better movies about demonic possession that would be a far better use of your time than The Unborn . Personally , I suggest The Exorcism of Emily Rose , which is one of the best I've seen ? |
544,387 | 562,732 | 949,731 | 3 | Yeah , more like " The Nothing's Happening ? " | So the tagline for The Happening is " We've Sensed It . We've Seen The Signs . Now ? It's Happening . " We've sensed it ? Sensed what ? Seen what signs ? Yeah , we've seen " Signs , " but THE signs of some mysterious coming disaster ? Maybe this " we " in the tagline is referring to the people that live in the parallel world takes place ? At any rate , the first half of the movie is a wonderful exercise in Shyamalan's ability to create an eerie atmosphere and to insert the unusual and otherworldly in an everyday situation . There are weird events taking place that are at first assumed to be the work of some kind of biological terrorist attack . There appears to be some kind of toxin that causes people to become lethargic and then suicidal , leading to some morbidly fascinating scenes such as one in which one construction worker after another silently walks off the scaffolding of a building , falling to their deaths on the ground below . But it is in the reality of the situation that Shyamalan is completely lost . He doesn't have the first clue about how to direct groups of people , which takes away any sense of realism that the movie might have had . There is a scene in a café early in the movie where a large group of people are huddled trying to figure out what to do . One person mentions that the incident doesn't appear to be affecting anyone in an area 90 miles away , so everyone immediately stands up silently and marches out of the café without a word . It is impossible to see these as real , frightened people and not the underpaid film extras that they clearly are . John Leguizamo turns in an outstanding performance but it overshadows his role , which doesn't command such a powerful actor . Mark Wahlberg is very watchable , as always , but it is sad to see so much character and plot development that literally goes nowhere . It's difficult not to think of Village of the Damned when watching this movie , but the movie really falls on its face when one guy starts talking about , get this , a mysterious ability that plants have to target and kill specific predators . I won't reveal the intricate details of what " the happening " is , but when it is revealed , the movie instantly turns irretrievably dumb and makes me pine for the time of the giant bug movies of the 1950s . All I will say is that there is a point in the movie where Wahlberg talks to a plant , asking it permission to be in a house . The goofiness is through the roof in this thing . I also love the use of dialogue in the movie . There is one scene near the end of the film where Wahlberg and his wife have reached a state of hopelessness , believing that their deaths are imminent , and they start talking about the mood rings they tried out on their first date , joking about how the color that turned up indicated that she was horny . Great conversation to have in front of your 9-year-old just before you all suffer a quick and mysterious death ! The " climax " of the movie is the perfect description of the reason for my summary line , and the film ends with an indication that it's not over , and with me sleeping soundly and indifferently on my sofa ? |
544,586 | 562,732 | 335,245 | 3 | And a Wayans brother has blown yet another movie . | The original Ladykillers is one of those rare comedy classics that's not really funny anymore , like The Odd Couple . But it is smartly made and it respects itself and its audience . It's a dark comedy but it's a smart one , it has colorful characters who move through the movie in pursuit of questionable goals and suffer through lots of hilarious mishaps along the way . Sure , they're not funny , but you have to appreciate the situational humor involved . Like the original film , the 2004 remake focuses on a strange ensemble of characters each in it for the money , no one knows anyone else outside the group , and the leader thinks he has everything planned out to the most minute detail until everything that can possibly go wrong goes wrong at every turn . I remember when The Ladykillers came out in theaters , where I never had the chance to see it , and I remember being genuinely surprised to see that the Dawn of the Dead remake was getting better reviews than this , the latest Tom Hanks movie . I just don't associate Tom Hanks with movies that get lesser acclaim than remakes of 80s horror films . Then I saw the Dawn of the Dead remake and I understood why it was getting better reviews . Now I've seen The Ladykillers and I understand even more . Tom Hanks , as is to be expected , delivers a spot-on performance as an intellectual from the deep south , brilliantly pulling off not only the accent but the demeanor and earthily classy mannerisms as well . Not that I'm some expert on the deep south , but consider his introduction into the film , when he knocks on Mrs . Munson's door and reluctantly pursues her escaped cat ( ' Won't the cat eventually pine for its masters affections and return of its own initiative ? ' ) . I love stuff like that . You don't just come up with dialogue like that , it takes a lot of talent to enhance the complexity of a simple sentence like that . The film has started off on the right foot . And then , of course , you have Marlon Wayans , the most catastrophic casting decision in the entire film by far . I'm confused by his impressive performance in Requiem For A Dream , because in every other movie I've ever seen him involved with he has been an absolute disaster . His ridiculous character screaming mind-numbing streams of profanity single handedly ruined this movie , the Scary Movies , which he wrote , are some of the worst , most sickening slop I've ever seen recorded on film , and Senseless and White Chicks are two movies that I am determined never to see . I'll watch a movie even if I know it's going to be a disaster ( I've seen all three Scary Movies , for example ) , but this time I'm putting my foot down . I can't even IMAGINE sitting through White Chicks , and no amount of curiosity about the formation of Marlon Wayans ' idiot iconography will persuade me to watch Senseless . I'm struggling not to swear off on sight anything that he is ever involved with again . Look at Jamie Foxx , for example , another actor whose career sprung from the dregs of television , In Loving Color . He's certainly been in his share of tasteless roles , but has built up his career to the point where he is generating Oscar buzz for his massive performance in the upcoming Ray , not to mention other great films like Ali , Collateral and , to a slightly lesser extent , Redemption . Wayans is still running around acting like a complete moron in ridiculous roles like this one , single-handedly destroying what should have been a classy and clever remake of a classic . Then again , maybe it's unfair to compare Jamie Foxx and Marlon Wayans , since Wayans could never hope to possess the tiniest fraction of the talent that Foxx has , but you have to have your limits . Never in my life have I seen a Tom Hanks movie that made it so easy to picture him trying to hide his face at the premiere . What kind of a turn is this for the Coen brothers , who generally have characters so rich and interesting that they overshadow most of the rest of the film ? Their movies are not about their stories , they're about the characters . In this film , every single character is a cliché . The stolid general , the idiot jock literally without a thought in his head , the ludicrous MacSam ( Wayans ) who is nothing but a spewing fountain of profanity and a direct insult to the African American audience , one character is even defined by his having irritable bowel syndrome . I really expect more from the Coens , who we have to thank for such masterpieces as Raising Arizona , Fargo , The Big Lebowski and O , Brother , Where Art Thou ? ( spoilers ) Wayans ' brain-dead performance is thankfully outweighed slightly by the strength of Mrs . Munson's character , but unfortunately her character is also a turn from the point of the original film , from which most of the humor was derived . That movie wasn't even very funny , so I would think that every effort possible would be made to maintain the comedy , much of which came from the situation of a lot of men trying to pull a fast one on a sweet little old lady , but who catches on to their game and ends up in control of everything . In this version , you have a lot of men trying to sneak around Mrs . Munson as though she were their mother . She is smarter and stronger than all of them , which removes the irony of their defeat and a large foundation of the comedy in the story . Then the Coens tried to make up for that loss by writing a character like MacSam and succeed only in digging the hole deeper . The Coen brothers have teamed their powerful directing and writing skills with the astronomical talents of Tom Hanks , and thanks in large part to a typical Wayans performance , they have indeed laid a multi-million dollar egg . Miss it . |
544,851 | 562,732 | 120,907 | 3 | WARNING : DO NOT WATCH WHILE EATING . DO NOT EVEN WATCH IF YOU HAVE EATEN IN THE LAST SIX TO EIGHT HOURS . IN FACT , TAKE SOME TUMS IN ADVANCE . | ExistenZ is an exercise in bad taste combined with a reasonable budget , which was acquired despite an almost total absence of any sort of interesting story . Actually , before I go that far I should say that the story is , in fact , fairly complex and operates on several levels , but it is executed so badly and downright grotesquely that the story is often completely irrelevant , as though each scene is trying to outdo the last in distracting the viewer from what the whole movie is about in the first place . Jennifer Jason Leigh plays the part of Allegra Geller , a star video game programmer who is just about to come out with the most technologically advanced video game ever created . Evidently , the game is able to tap into players ' minds so that they actually LIVE the video game in virtual reality . Needless to say , that fine line between reality and virtual reality becomes more and more blurred until all sorts of crazy havoc ensues . The danger of the game is first hinted at in an early scene where Allegra is conducting a closed-door demonstration of her new game and some nutcase attacks her with an alarmingly ORGANIC weapon ( for lack of the NEED for a better word , as it turns out ) , which initially seems like some crazed weirdo raised by video games but , after a moment's thought , is probably more likely someone who has had contact with the game . Sort of like Vincent Grey in the Sixth Sense . At any rate , I would say that the movie takes it's first precipitous plunge when we see the video game controllers which , like the weapon that nutcase used to try to kill Allegra , are not only disturbingly organic to the point that they are more like creatures than controllers , but they are operated through the use of equally disturbing fondling motions , as though the players compete with each other by trying to pleasure their controller better than their opponents . And don't even get me started on the bio-ports . Very few times have I ever seen such things in a movie , although it's not necessarily new from director David Cronenburg , who has a history of putting weird sexual things in his movies ( see Crash , which he directed just before taking on eXistenZ ) . In my personal opinion , a lot of things in eXistenZ were unappealing simply because they were not necessarily offensive , but simply distasteful in a pretty literal sense . Consider , for example , the scene where our heroes , Allegra and Ted Pikul ( another great performance from Jude Law ) are eating in a suspicious restaurant , and Pikul gradually discovers that the hideous piece of meat that he is eating can be assembled into a greasy gun much like the one used to attack Allegra near the beginning of the movie . Maybe I was just completely put off by that scene because I was eating barbecued chicken while I was watching it . I was absolutely horrified , I almost had to turn the movie off . Interestingly enough , the video game plot is complex and simplistic at the same time . It reveals either a deep understanding of Allegra , the main character , or an excessively weak script , or both . Maybe the former was a lucky byproduct of the latter . While inside the game ( which gradually becomes increasingly difficult to determine ) , they follow a rather childish path , following cues that sound like something a little kid would make up while writing a story for a homework assignment . A creepy country gas station attendant named Gas tells them to look for a Chinese restaurant in the forest , and order the special , while turning down such immensely appetizing dishes as mutants and reptiles . But then , of course , we have scenes like the one where Ted performs cunnilingus on Allegra's bio-port . I think it's safe to say such things don't turn up in many homework assignments . Clearly , the movie's message is mostly about the dangers of extensive video gaming and the addictive nature of the way they detach us from reality . Movies do the same thing , but good movies cause you to use your mind , to think about things ( much like good video games , and both are unfortunately rare ) . So this is not a new idea , but where the movie really suffers , aside from a lot of its stomach-turning imagery , is in the fact that it is lost in the wake of the massively superior Wachowski brothers film The Matrix , released the same month . Big movies have a tendency to arrive in pairs , and one always seems to be hugely superior to the other . Independence Day and The Arrival , Armageddon and Deep Impact ( the latter being the vastly superior , obviously ) , Antz and A Bug's Life , Volcano and Dante's Peak , etc . There was a big difference in likability between Antz and A Bug's Life rather than in quality , but in this case , while it has been hailed by many critics and fans alike , I found eXistenZ to push the envelope of bad taste past the breaking point and into the realm of weirdness with its often revolting mixture of ham-handed , graphic sexual imagery and what Roger Ebert described as showing ' characters eating things that surgeons handle with gloves on . ' |
544,084 | 562,732 | 97,257 | 3 | This film cannot even be taken seriously as a movie not to be taken seriously . Although it does deliver a few sparse laughs , the sheer deliberate stupidity of the acting just gets ridiculous almost immediate | Clearly , Earth Girls Are Easy is not a film that its writers meant to win any awards or tell any important message . The cartoonish appearance of the aliens and the laughable fact that they have a human appearance once their pastel fur is shaved off is a joke . This film as a whole is boring and immediately forgettable . Given the fact that alien beings , if they do exist , could be in virtually ANY form ( and almost definitely not a humanoid form ) , I find it difficult to believe that the aliens in this movie were nothing but hairy humans . At some points their mentalities seem infantile as they vainly try to assimilate into the human lifestyle , and then you have to acknowledge the fact that they were able to learn the English language in its entirety in a matter of hours . One of them even becomes romantically involved with Valerie ( Geena Davis ) , and seems to know all of the problems that arise in romantic relationships . I can't stand movies like this ! A valley girl in California is sunbathing in her yard when a spaceship crash-lands in her swimming pool . That's another thing , by the way ; a spaceship capable of interstellar travel and yet small enough to fit in a swimming pool ? These guys should have tried to get jobs designing compact cars . A bunch of hairy aliens emerge from this little bitty ship , and Valerie becomes friends with them . She and her friend CANDY ( as respectable a name as any ) decide to shave them and find that they all resemble mediocre ( at the time , at least ) Hollywood actors . Their adventures into the world of Southern California provide for a couple of uncertain and unconvincing laughs , yet mostly serve to bore and annoy . Have you so far heard any reason to watch this film ? That's because there is none . To make matters worse , the film was partially a musical . I don't have anything against musicals , but it was bad enough that the aliens figured out the human race in a matter of a day or two , now we are asked to believe that they like to sing and dance on the beach . Besides that , some of the songs seem to have been thrown in for no apparent reason ( " Because I'm blonde " comes immediately to mind ) . Maybe I am being too harsh on this film , but I watched it mostly because I had never seen it and I am a huge Jim Carrey fan , and I was just hugely disappointed . The target audience for Earth Girls Are Easy is incredibly immature , so if you are out of elementary school , I would suggest that you avoid this one . |
544,209 | 562,732 | 318,081 | 3 | Should have been called Timewave ! | I have an undying love of time travel movies , I think it's one of the single most interesting premises ever applied to motion pictures , and even here in A Sound of Thunder , I was interested for the first half an hour or so until I realized that it has absolutely no understanding of how time travel paradoxes work . Of course , no one has ever travelled through time , so all we know about what would happen if you travelled to the distant past and changed something is only theory , but the minor application of simple logic suggests that if you travel to the Cretaceous period and then change something , that change remains in that time , changing everything for millions of years until modern times . Meanwhile , the time traveller will arrive instantly back in his or her own time to find everything instantly changed . Not in this movie . Here , all the changes take place gradually , in " time waves , " which are basically just astonishingly bad CGI tidal waves , as though Father Time is only gradually beginning to realize that someone has tricked him . You see , each wave changes different things , animals , plants , weather , etc . and of course , the humans will be changed by the last wave , so that they can watch all of the other changes taking place while they wonder what will happen to them . Good thing the movie has an expert who somehow knows how all of this stuff works . What I really like is that , after the first wave , the two main characters are standing near an overturned vehicle , where a crowd of people have gathered and are all crowded around the vehicle , evidently more interested in the fact that it's on its side than that their entire city has instantly reached an advanced state of decay . Things start to get complicated when Travis Ryer , Edward Burns , tries to go back and stop the first crew from making the first change , but this time , instead of the computer missing the landing site by five minutes , she misses by tens of millions of years , sending Ryer into the old west , right in front of another time wave . And by the way , one person on the IMDb suggests a plot hole in the fact that we aren't told how they always go to the same spot in time . They go back to the same point in time because the computer , Tammie , I think they called her , is programmed to send them there . The physics and calculations involved in doing that are not explained , but obviously to attempt such a thing would be confusing and meaningless anyway . It was about 35 minutes into the film that I knew it was going to be pretty disastrously bad , there was going to be no redeeming turnaround where it would get better in the second half . Of course , movies like this almost never do that . The reason to keep watching is to see what kind of things they come up with , even if they are badly animated . I wanted to see what changes would happen to the humans . We never do , of course . That would be too complicated for cartoonish special effects like this . All we see are some bizarre gorilla dinosaurs , and luckily Ryers happens to know their " only weakness . " Time travel is endlessly fascinating to me , but sadly , this one goes down as a boring failure . |
544,413 | 562,732 | 489,270 | 3 | Yet another failed second sequel . | It's extremely difficult to make a good " Part 3 " in any franchise , and Saw is a perfect example . The descent in quality from parts 1 and 2 to this one is so precipitous that it makes me think of the fact that , in trilogies or otherwise , good second sequels are extremely hard to come by . Back to the Future and Alien 3 are the only two that I can think of at the moment , and there's a Saw 4 . It starts with the investigation of a man who had chains attached to numerous parts of his body , and he had to rip them off in order to get out of a room before a bomb exploded . One of the detectives says that that was " all he had to do . " He gets mocked for this by another detective , since the man had to rip chains out of both of his Achilles tendons . Makes it a little hard to walk out of anywhere . At any rate , before long we sit through a pointless series of scenes showing the kidnappings of various victims , ripe for the fast-forward button . By this point in any series or franchise or whatever , the formula will be getting pretty old and tired unless something new is added . There's nothing new here . It's the same old crap about this guy John Kramer somehow having the time to devise unbelievably complex torture devices and little puzzles for the victims to try to solve in order to escape . The biggest problem is that by now it is getting so ridiculous to see this guy devise schemes to literally rip people to pieces while at the same time trying to criticize people for neglecting children and wives . What ? ? ? Sorry John , but the brutal tortures and murders are having the little unexpected side effect of damaging your credibility just a tiny bit . In this installment , John has kidnapped a doctor and is forcing her to keep him alive . I love her introduction , by the way . She performs one of those movie operations where she does something miraculous , saves a young child's life , and everyone around her gets mad at her for it . I love that . Talk about not being appreciated . And on top of that , her marriage is falling apart . Soon she finds herself kidnapped and wearing a collar that's basically half a dozen guns pointed at her throat . Maybe my own luck isn't so bad after all . And the brilliant talent of Angus Macfadyen is totally wasted as Jeff , Dr . Denlon's ( Bahar Soomekh ) husband and another of Jigsaw's victims . Here's the whole movie - " Hello so and so , I want to play a game . The device you are wearing is attached to your whatever , in order to escape you'll have to pass a series of tests . Let the game begin . Blah blah blah blah blah ? ? " If this is getting old for you , don't feel like you're missing anything if you stop watching these movies now . By this point , the Saw films are only for hardcore Saw and horror fans , the latter of which I used to consider myself but with each movie like this that comes along , the further away from the genre I feel . Remember Hostel ? If that's where horror movies are going , to that level of vacuous thought and logic , I'm done , I can tell you that right now . Saw 3 is a hundred times better , but still a bad movie . One of the major revelations that this sequel adds to the series is that we see an interesting setup to the original film , as well as behind the scenes of how and why some of the devices are created and Amanda's relationship to Kramer , the killer . Their relationship is ridiculous in the extreme , they just don't make a lick of sense as human beings . Not even a drug addict would get as emotionally attached to such a pasty , brutal man as this guy . Her tears before his surgery are outdone in bizarre ridiculousness only by her reaction of disgust during his surgery . Ripping that woman's rib cage apart didn't seem to bother her so much . Maybe it was the licensed physician that was worrying her . Speaking of which , there is nothing dumber than people who blame doctors for their illnesses . Dr . Denlon was one of the diagnosing doctors of Kramer's " inoperable tumor , " so he decides to kidnap her and punish her for , I don't know , not being able to operate . Maybe if she was Superdoctor and could do an operation that no one else in the world could do he wouldn't be so upset . Then again , Jeff , in anguish over his son's death by a drunk driver , allows a witness who fled out of shock and fear to freeze to death before his eyes for doing something that a good percentage of normal people would have done . She was terrified ! And then he considers allowing the judge who sentenced the killer too lightly ( what state gives 6 months to drunk drivers that kill kids ? ? ) to drown in rotten pig guts . Following that kind of logic , I wouldn't have been surprised if he had wanted to punish God for the irony of letting a drunk driver kill his son in the middle of a sunny day . The end of the film has an unexpected level of complexity , some of which works , but also includes an unintentionally hilarious shotgun blast and a device called " the rack " which is truly sickening and disturbing , and not in the good horror movie kind of way . The end of the series is WELL past due , yet I'm sad to see that there is a part 5 being made . I hope they can manage to get a shot of someone kicking a dead horse into the movie somewhere ? |
543,757 | 562,732 | 480,242 | 4 | Steve Carell's most disastrous failure so far ? | There was something that told me that Dan in Real Life was going to be a great comedy , one of those overlooked gems that come along and don't get the recognition that they deserve until years later ( like The Big Lebowski ) . MAN was I wrong . This is a sappy , awkward , uncomfortable drama that thinks it's a comedy but ultimately never figures out which direction to go . It presumes to give us a realistic story of a single father raising three daughters some years after the death of his wife and their mother , but then gives us a cheesy , half-wit sitcom that's about as realistic as The Great Outdoors and not as funny . Dan is a single father raising three daughters ? oh wait , I already said that . We learn about the relationship between Dan and his daughters as they're gearing up for the road trip out to their annual family reunion . The youngest daughter is wise beyond her years , the middle daughter is growing exasperated to learn what kind of man her father really is , and the oldest teenage daughter is in love with some punk kid . Dan finding thongs in her laundry doesn't make him feel any better . In fact , the only thing that is remotely realistic about the movie is the relationship between the girls and their father . The tension in the house is through the roof and is never overdone or unrealistic , but it's also never funny even for a second . OK , so here's what happens , you'll love this . Soon after arriving to meet the family , Dan is in a bookstore and has a highly scripted run-in with Marie ( Juliette Binoche ) , a beautiful brunette with whom Dan feels an immediate connection . They have a quick coffee together before she gets a phone call and has to leave , revealing to Dan that she is already in a relationship . Dan goes back to his house and starts talking about this amazing woman he just met , and then his brother Mitch proudly introduces his girlfriend , Marie , to the family . So most of the comedy results from Dan and Marie trying to keep their secret from the family , but unfortunately all it leads to is a lot of awkward and uncomfortable situations that even the eternally awkward Ben Stiller might hesitate to be a part of . Dan is summarily ignored by everyone in the family while they dote on Marie , urging her and Mitch to get married and acting as if Dan's not even there . At another point Dan loses his temper and creates a huge scene during dinner . Marie and Mitch get all cuddly and touchy feely in front of him and I guess we're supposed to laugh good-naturedly as he watches helplessly . Oh but wait , that's not even the good part ! There is a scene in this movie where Dan's brother-in-law , while in the same room with Dan's mother and father , urges Dan to masturbate so he doesn't get too " backed up . " He reminds Dan , in front of his MOTHER , that it's important to " unplug the drain . " God , it was awful . I'm gonna go ahead and put something out there . First of all , this is not an original scene . It was as old as the hills when it came up in American Pie ten years ago , but I'm going to go ahead and suggest that such a thing has never ever ever ever happened in real life . Such things only happen in bad comedies like Dan in , ahem , Real Life . Every cliché is represented here . The tactless brother-in-law , the obligatory scene showing that people in movies don't understand that dance-offs are simply not funny , the sketchy blind date with the chick who turns out to be crazy hot , even ( my favorite ) the " oops I'm so sorry I just fell down and well shucks here I am laying right on top of you " routine . What ever happened to real life ? The title of this movie is an even bigger lie than Friday the 13th Part IV : The Final Chapter ! Eight chapters later , I'd just like to finally put this on the record - Final chapter my ass ! ! Or consider this . There's a scene in the movie where Dan finds himself standing in the shower fully clothed with Marie while she showers with Dan's daughter just outside the shower curtain talking to Marie about her love and sex worries . So if you imagine such a thing could ever be amusing , then by all means I won't dissuade you from watching this movie . But I will tell you this - I can imagine that there was a time when this movie looked good on paper , but something went wrong along the way and the result is a static , depressing drama without a scrap of personality . And one of the biggest problems is that Juliette Binoche , a tremendously talented actress , doesn't have a shred of chemistry with anyone on screen and looks completely out of place anywhere in the movie . She comes across as a classy European traveler , and the movie never aspires to explain how such a woman could end up with a tool like Dane Cook . The movie wants to be a charming family romantic comedy about love gone wrong and then right , or something like that , but unfortunately it comes across as a thoroughly depressing snooze-fest that is neither realistic nor amusingly fictional . The story ultimately contorts back on itself and forces a cookie-cutter Hollywood ending and even a cloying inspirational voice-over speech that rivals the one at the end of Bride Wars for pure , happy crappiness . Let's just be honest , shall we ? The thing is a train wreck . Enjoy at your own risk ! |
543,922 | 562,732 | 118,604 | 4 | At least it was funny ? | An American Werewolf in London is one of the most famous and enduring werewolf films ever made , and for good reason . Now , apparently director Anthony Waller has decided to try to cash in on that film's long ago success , resulting in a slightly amusing but altogether disappointing werewolf romp . Tom Everett Scott stars as Andy , our hero , who is a childish all-American college boy on a European sex tour with a couple of his friends . Interesting that they are keeping score of their sexual exploits , but decide to drop everything in order to help Andy pursue this mildly attractive blonde who they three met as she attempted suicide . Sounds like a keeper . The three guys are illegally camping on the Eiffel Tower one night when they happen across the girl about to jump , while luckily Andy had just been strapping on a bungee cord for his daredevil ( i . e . suicide ) stunt , bungee jumping off the Eiffel Tower . Anyone with two brain cells working at the same time would realize instantly that no one could ever survive bungee jumping off the Eiffel Tower , so it's a good thing that Andy at least winds up in the hospital . After a laughable rescue , thankfully it's followed by a genuinely effective laugh , and thus is the tone set for the rest of the movie . Unfortunately , they didn't know where to relax with the comedy and where to make the horror affective ( note : it never is ) . In the supplemental documentaries included on the DVD , they say that this is the most ambitious werewolf film ever made , which may very well be true , although the story is ridiculous , the cast is just a little too goofy ( imagine filling an ambitious werewolf film with the cast of " Parker Lewis Can't Lose , " and you'll have something pretty close to what's going on here ) , and the CGI , trumpeted as one of the film's proudest ingredients , is never convincing for a second . Just further evidence of my theory that no CGI effect has ever been made scary in film history . The werewolf emerging from the fountain and shaking off is indeed impressive , but still sadly does not look remotely real . Then again , the movie was made more than a decade ago , so maybe that was pretty impressive by 1997 standards . But for all of the stock put into the special effects , I was surprised to see that they made such a blunderous mistake during one of the transformation scenes . There is a groan inducing scene where a human transforms into a werewolf , and as we travel down the body we see it grow thicker and hairier and whatnot , and then the knees apparently snap and bend backwards as the body takes on the pose of a wolf . What the CGI team seems to have forgotten is that wolves have knees just like humans . The " knee " that was formed during this scene is actually the wolf's ankle . Haven't these people ever seen a dog before ? But for all of it's shortcomings ( and there are a great many ) , at least the film has a fair amount of effective comic relief . Most of which , however , is only in the first half , and the movie takes a precipitous decline after about the first 45 minutes . Note : the film crew were allowed astonishing access to film at the Eiffel Tower , which leads me to wonder what the French government thought about that decision when they finally saw the movie ? |
544,236 | 562,732 | 179,963 | 4 | Yoo-hoo ! Yoo-hoo ! | Shirley Temple once again takes on the role of Mary Lou Rogers , co-starring with her irritating brother Sonny , who is just as contrived and unconvincing as he was in the same role in Pardon My Pups , as I imagine he is in most of the other short films that he stars in with Temple playing Mary Lou . It seems that Sonny's childhood friend is going to be attending what is evidently a very coveted military academy , and after briefly celebrating , Sonny becomes sad , knowing that his own parents can't afford to send him to the same school , and that the news means that he'll be losing his best friend . What follows is a film during which the two boys constantly act just an unrealistically as the Hardy Boys who , when faced with things like the sounds of ghosts in creepy mansions , are famous for uttering such things as " I don't feel obliged to remain in this house one moment longer ! " There are a series of meaningless sight gags thrown into the movie as the boys set out to search for gold in the desert of California , setting off on bumpy dirt roads in an old jalopy ( which I suppose may have been brand new at the time ) on the sides of which are such crudely scrawled handwritten phrases as " Chickens Ride Inside , Roosters Ride Out , " and " No Good on Dirt Roads . " Shirley tags along , the curious little sister who wants to go hang out with the big kids , and ends up running into a strangely well-dressed but crazy man in the desert , who struggles to get her to ask him silly questions but fails because she already knows the answer . Turns out he is a man of some level of fame who has been suffering from amnesia , brought on by a cause which is never explained . Not that it matters , his whole presence in the movie is never explained . My theory is that they just needed a reason to have a man diving into a mirage that is really just hot sand to add to the sight gag of the kids plowing a wooden shack to the ground because they thought it was a mirage , just like the cavernous mansion that disappeared before their eyes earlier . Of the few of Shirley Temple's early short films that I've seen , I've found that the ones in which she plays Mary Lou , co-starring with Frank Coghlan Jr . as Sonny , are by far the least entertaining and amusing , and this one is no exception . Temple is just as charmingly adorable as she always is , but with that level of instant adoration , they could certainly do better than this . I think her cuteness worked against her in some ways , because she's been in many films which have little else to offer . |
544,857 | 562,732 | 325,258 | 4 | A story for the former child star in all of us ! | Yeah , I don't have any former child star in me , either . A movie about a former child star who has grown into a man with a massive ego and a non-existent fan base should have been the perfect part for such a successfully sarcastic and condescending actor like David Spade , but rather than pursue a story about a man trying to come to grips with life as a normal adult after a childhood as a cutesy TV star , Dickie Roberts : Former Child Star instead turns into some weird melodrama involving this guy seeking to become a normal person by hiring a decidedly un-normal family to treat him like one of the kids . Easily the best and most interesting thing about this movie are the many cameo appearances from lots of former child stars , playing the parts , for example , of some of Dickie's equally un-famous friends . The dysfunctionality of the family that Dickie joins renders his total transformation utterly unbelievable , even outside the fact that the entire plot is structured so that things will work out happily ever after in the end . We see Dickie in a scene early in the movie , traveling through the middle of the desert with his outrageously beautiful girlfriend Cyndi , played by Alyssa Milano . Evidently , even though he has grown up to be a nobody , he still has a Hollywood girlfriend . What she likes about him is left a mystery , but clearly it's not the fame and it definitely can't be the hair . Apparently , the movie exists in a parallel universe where your personality really does define your outward appearance , because Cyndi turns out to be such a vicious nightmare that a former child star is just about the best she can do for a boyfriend . ( spoilers ) Dickie joins into this family ( apparently with financial troubles although you could never tell , given the sheer magnitude of their house ) , and it turns out that the father has some wandering eyes , stays out all night and grows indignant at questions about where he is , and storms out of the house in a tantrum at the slightest provocation . In other words , he is in the movie for no other reason than to pop in to occasionally fill the father role and then to run away with Dickie's awful girlfriend , leaving his beautiful and sweet wife alone with Dickie . Unfortunately , she has been playing Dickie's mother throughout the movie so far , so it's hard to avoid an incestuous perceptions at their eventual romance . David Spade came up with the premise for the movie , so you can hardly blame them for casting him in the role of Dickie Roberts , but he is so typecast that it is even difficult for him to fulfill this role that almost seems to have been written specifically to accommodate his iconography . You can tell where this presumption goes wrong , because the scenes where he is acting like a smart mouthed , arrogant child star are hilarious , while the scenes where the orchestra kicks in with the sad music to enhance the emotion fall flat . I could see why they foolishly thought this tactic would work . In the scene in Black Sheep where Mike Donnelly ( Chris Farley ) tells Steve Dodds ( Spade ) that he got fired from his job , Spade is actually able to sidestep his ever-present sarcasm and narcissism to effectively display true sympathy . It never works even a single time in this movie , where it is needed so much more . I can overlook stupid movies that at least have a positive message . Deuce Bigalow , for example , was seriously low-brow , but carried a wonderful message about proudly being yourself . Scary Movie1 , 2 , and 3 , on the other extreme , are absolute bottom-of-the-barrel crap without a single redeeming value of any kind . Dickie Roberts does not even begin to approach their staggeringly abysmal level of pure trash , but to whom is the message of this movie directed , whatever that message might be ? Is it supposed to be an uplifting semi-autobiography for struggling former child stars ? If so , it is a movie whose entire target audience appears in the film . If not , it really has no purpose other than a few widely-spaced chuckles . |
544,895 | 562,732 | 83,624 | 4 | A million times better than Hostel . | Normally I wouldn't make such an obscure connection , but just a few days ago I watched Eli Roth's latest crapfest , Hostel , and am still reeling from the tremendous impact of unparalleled stupidity that made up that movie . Now , this may or may not matter , but I watched Basket Case because I somehow got it confused with Bad Taste , an early Peter Jackson movie , which I wanted to watch to see how the director of King Kong and Lord of the Rings started his career . When I noticed during the opening credits that it was a different director , I almost turned it off , but decided to stick it out anyway , and I guess I'm not entirely upset that I did . The movie concerns a young man who carries around his grievously deformed , pumpkin - sized Siamese twin brother in a wicker basket wherever he goes . He and his brother are going around seeking revenge on the doctors that separated them and left the slightly less human looking one for dead . Your standard revenge story , except for the wicker basket and it's contents , you might say . The movie features tremendously bad acting , screen writing , direction , special effects , etc . , but oddly enough was clearly painstakingly edited . With everything bad and just cheesy about the movie , it is very clear to me that a substantial amount of time and effort went into the post-production element . Not that that makes a good horror movie , of course . I have to admit that I enjoyed this movie mostly because it reminded me what a good " bad " horror movie is . This movie is so bad that it is fun to watch ? occasionally ? while Hostel , which I recently suffered through in an actual movie theater , is extremely bad and not fun to watch even for a second , and should , in fact , never be viewed by anyone . Ever . I have to say that with all of the blood and screaming that takes place in this movie , the hardest scenes to watch are the ones where Duane feeds Belial , his hideously malformed brother . Maybe it was the fact that he fed him an entire bag of hamburgers which were still wrapped in tin foil , but I'm pretty sure it was just the sound effects . The movie has something to be said for it , in that it is certainly effectively disgusting and there are certainly times when it induces genuine cringing ( not the least of which are anytime Belial makes any noise ) , although I will say that an accompanying documentary about searching for the locations where the movie was filmed was a pretty depressing experience . Director Frank Henenlotter looks back with amused chuckles ( thinly veiled regret ? ) at his involvement with the Basket Cases , and is accompanied for some mysterious reason by some goofball who seems more interested in talking about other directors and promoting an obscure musical venture than in talking about Basket Case . There is an interesting display of some of the props used in the films , but Henelotter's fate and , even more , the fate of Richard Pierce , who played Duane's father , are pretty sad . Nevertheless , this is a classic example of some of the gorier and cheesier horror films that were coming out in the 80s , but unfortunately not a classic example of the better ones . |
544,805 | 562,732 | 851,530 | 4 | The best " lodger " mystery since Wallace & Gromit and The Wrong Trousers ! | I have an undying love of true crime movies . There is something automatically fascinating about a disturbing story of true crime when there is the added effect that it is at least loosely based on real events . It's one of the most important things that makes me love movies like Zodiac or In Cold Blood or Dog Day Afternoon or even Silence of the Lambs , even though the real life element of that one is , ah , a little less specific . The Lodger , as you know , was Alfred Hitchcock's first major film , made in 1927 , well before sound . The new Lodger has a tough time justifying itself , but it is not entirely without effect . The movie tells the story of a mysterious recurrence of Jack-the-Ripper-style murders , although it takes the crimes out of the London fog and replaces it on the wet streets of Los Angeles . A series of brutal prostitute murders have been determined to be exact replicas of very specific Ripper murders , even positioning the bodies the same places and making similar efforts in geography . Complicating matters is the fact that a man has already been jailed and executed for the murders , which unfortunately start happening again . Meanwhile , an unhappy housewife across town is routinely abandoned by her deadbeat husband , who repeatedly tells her basically to take her medication and leave him alone , and by the way , why can't she make herself useful and find a lodger for that old shed in the backyard . Money doesn't grow on trees , woman . She does find a lodger , one who acts sufficiently mysterious and suspicious , and for a while the movie turns into your standard murder mystery thriller , although I was glad to see the addition in the third act of the clouding issue of an unstable mind . It's a story-telling technique that is very easy to screw up , but when it's used right it can add a whole different experience to an otherwise straight-forward and uninteresting story . It is not used here as well as I've seen it used before ( at least in originality ) , but it's true that it adds a much-needed extra layer to an otherwise insufficient story . Unfortunately , because the rest of the movie is a murder mystery the style of which is far too familiar by now , the instability idea seems like an effort to add something to an otherwise weak movie , and it's just not enough to make the movie at all memorable . In fact , some moviegoers will find it outwardly laughable . Alfred Molina plays a detective who is striving to solve the case , although I would expect an actor of his caliber to be spending his time on better movies than this . Unfortunately , despite his performance and a number of other mildly impressive roles , the movie is also peppered with horrible acting and ridiculously badly written characters . The lodger himself , first of all , is of the variety that acts extremely suspicious in ways that could only possibly happen if he were really the killer . When the wife accidentally discovers him burning clothing in the barbecue , he calmly explains that he was just trying to dry them . In a good mystery , perfectly normal behavior is made to be suspicious by the context of other actions , the music , the performances , etc . Who the hell dries pants on a barbecue ? There is also the issue of a psychologist who analyzes the police's evidence about the mysterious killer , and offers an explanation that is little more than a lot of wordy nonsense that sounds like it was thrown together by a Psychology undergrad at UCLA with no other purpose than to sound impressive . Sadly , it doesn't . The ex-wife of Molina's character is also a mental case herself who , for reasons that I won't reveal , is unable to stand the sight of her husband . When she does at one point in the film , she descends into a hysterical fit of screaming which , had it gone on for about another three seconds , would have been enough for me to give up and fling the DVD out the window . But the movie's biggest problem is that it comes off as a standard mystery , the first half of which is designed to show why everyone is a suspect and the second half designed to deliver a thrilling finale that , when it comes , just isn't all that thrilling . The murder investigation is full of movie-miracles ( like a footprint which is leaked to the press and printed " actual size " on the front page of the newspaper ) but the real letdown doesn't come until the final scene , lifted directly out of Psycho and full of psychobabble nonsense . And the psychologist's analysis , believe it or not , takes place before the actual arrest . Fastest mental analysis ever ! ! But it's not so much that the psychological explanation doesn't make sense as much as the fact that the reasons given may send your palm ( s ) flying rapidly to your forehead . So be advised ? |
544,381 | 562,732 | 85,750 | 4 | Very bad but not THAT bad . | Yes , Jaws 3 is a bad , bad movie . It's even a step down from the disastrous Jaws 2 , and yet another insult to Spielberg's original , which remains one of the most enduring thrillers ever made . But the Bottom 100 ? At the time of this writing , Jaws 3 stands at # 71 on the IMDb's list of the 100 worst movies ever made , as judged by us , the users . While the movie was certainly ridiculous , it is NOT the 71st worst movie ever made . Maybe this is just a numbers thing , but if movies like Nightmare Weekend and Graveyard Shift ( 1987 ) are not on that list , the Jaws 3 definitely does not deserve to be . What it DOES deserve , however , is a good shellacking for being such a mess . Jaws 3 . interestingly enough , continues more on Jaws 2 than the original Jaws . Jaws 2 at least had the sense to go for creating some of the tension and atmosphere that made the original such a success , while things like the shark turning into a run-of-the-mill movie monster were merely by-products . Jaws 3 takes that descent of the shark from predator to monster and runs with THAT . You can see some of the budding ideas that led to Deep Blue Sea ( another stupid shark movie ) in Jaws 3 , as the shark takes on abilities to roar , swim backwards , swim through the reinforced glass and into the underwater control room , hide itself , and basically hunt like a human . The shark acts so unnatural in this movie that by the end I wouldn't have been surprised if it pulled out a shotgun and started shooting at people . On the plus side , they at least avoided something stupid like have the shark smile , but then again they couldn't resist having a dolphin frantically shaking it's head ' no ' while a couple of diving humans search the sunken Spanish Galleon , bringing themselves dangerously close to the shark . Please . It's things like this that earn the movie worse ratings from the people than it deserves . Indeed , at least one person has pointed out a goof that's not really a goof . When the tour guide is leading people out of the Undersea Kingdom , it's not the green screen set that you can clearly see , but simply the outline of the portion of the Kingdom that they had been standing in . What no one has pointed out , however , is that when they were loading up poison to shoot at the shark , one person fills a syringe and then squirts out probably half of the poison that had been pulled into the syringe , wasting half of it and promptly demonstrating a massive lack of understanding of why that's done in the first place . You point the syringe straight up , flick it to release any air bubbles from the sides , then squeeze until it squirts to make sure there is no air in it . In humans , a single air bubble could mean a stroke and death , in the shark , the more ways to kill it the merrier . Besides , the syringe was held at an angle , and you can clearly see a gigantic pocket of air in it . I've never given an injection in my life and even I know that . ( spoilers ) In the movie's defense , at least it had a mildly interesting premise . Mike Brody , from Jaws 2 , has grown into a strapping young man and works , fittingly enough , at Sea World . He's got this girlfriend with whom he has a goofy movie relationship , she's the dolphin trainer . Much of the first half of the movie is dedicated to showing a couple of dolphins do a lot of jumps and flips , then they disappear completely from the film during the shark portion , and then are cheered at the end for still being alive . One no name dolphin is munched during the course of the movie , but it appears in the movie only long enough to be eaten so it doesn't matter . The movie is probably now best known for being the first , and only , Jaws movie released in 3-D , a cute effect which does not translate well to video . Given the logistics of providing a home video in 3-D , they had no choice but to remove the 3-D effects and release it as a normal film . I really would like to have seen it in 3-D , because it is clear that the filmmakers put more stock in this effect than anything else in the movie . The 3-D scenes stick out like sore thumbs , not just because the movie stops completely in its tracks every time one arrives so that it can linger on screen and audience members can reach out in front of them and try to touch things , but because these scenes on video are so badly computer generated that it's almost funny . And they were right to put a lot of stock into the 3-D effects , because as is now obvious , without them the movie falls on its face as soon as the opening credits . In theaters , these credits may have jumped off the screen and wowed audiences . On video , they do nothing but cover up the water ski pyramid that you're trying to watch . Initially meant to be the first oohs and aahs of the movie , now they simply get in the way of one of the only impressive things in the entire movie . Another stupid thing from Jaws 2 that is added upon here is that Jaws 2 was a stupid teen horror movie , and this one goes for the same cast of stupid teenagers . Granted , they're all older than the kids in the Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street movies , but consider the bar scene . They entertain themselves by getting drunk and then trying to push each other over in ludicrous games like Standoff , and even worse , consider the scene where Lea Thompson's character , Kelly , is wooed by Sean Brody , who tricks her in a game of Standoff , takes her back to his table , and proceeds to hit on her in the most stupefying way imaginable . The only thing more shocking about how un-charming he is is that Kelly just devours it . With flirting like that going on , we don't need a shark . Humans will go extinct on their own . On the plus side , the following morning provides the only truly funny line in the movie , when Mike Brody offers Sean a cup of coffee ( ' Just throw it in my eyes , it will work faster . ' ) . Unfortunately , the movie cheapens itself by showing a badly decomposed ( and pathetically fake-looking ) body of a shark attack victim . Remember the autopsy scene from the original ? Not a drop of blood and still leaps and bounds more effective than this . The ballasts attached to the shark are back for this installment , but the spirit of the movies is gone . It is nowhere near the classic thriller of the original , but simply a bad b-horror movie . And by the way , what ever happened to the music ? ? |
544,258 | 562,732 | 221,218 | 4 | What was all that nonsense about thrills and chills around every corner ? | I read another reviewer who recommended The Glass House because of the satisfactory performance from Leelee Sobiesky despite the fact that there is little to nothing original in the movie . With all due respect , this doesn't strike me as a very relevant statement , because it's clear that Leelee Sobiesky is a massively talented actor , but The Glass House is simply a thriller that covers no new ground , and it doesn't even put any effort into being repetitive . The main problem that I had with The Glass House is that it's one of those thrillers that builds up and builds up and builds up and then just stops , like it forgot the climax . It is a creepy movie in that it contains characters , namely Terrance Glass , the parental guardian with serious money problems , who are so creepy as people that they are almost cartoonish . This is a man the likes of which exists nowhere on the face of the earth but in cheesy thrillers like The Glass House . Leelee Sobieski plays a teenage girl named Ruby whose parents are tragically killed in a car accident . When she and her younger brother are placed with foster parents , friends of the family , it becomes increasingly suspicious that they are the very people that killed them or had them killed . So this is where I get confused . The movie struck remarkably little interest with me , but from what I got , Terrance had the parents killed because he needed money , although we never really find out why . His living accommodations certainly do not suggest a lack of income . There were scenes where he was thrown against walls and whatnot by lowlifes who were demanding money , but my understanding was that they were demanding payment for pulling off the murder of the two parents . So here's my question , and I would appreciate anyone who can set me straight on the matter . Since Terrance and his wife can afford a house as massive as the one in which they live ( as well as a variety of badass sports cars , which include a flashy Jaguar and a freaking Ferrari Testarossa ) , why are they in need of money , if not to pay off the killers ? If the money is NOT to pay off the killers , why did they need money in the first place ? Were they in debt ? Was Terrance so in love with his Testarossa that he would rather have a close friend killed than sell it to help pay off his debt ? I'm sure I'm just missing something there , so it doesn't really bother me too much , but Terrance's cheesy creepiness ( consider , for example , the scene where he swerves recklessly into oncoming traffic and then skids onto the side of the road , only to reach over and buckle Ruby's seat belt as though everything's normal ) by itself reduces the film the b-movie obscurity . Oh , and never mind the way he talks . Can't they create a bad guy without making him talk like Darth friggin ' Vader ? I can't say that The Glass House is not entertaining , because it is , but even that ends up counting against it in the end . The movie most certainly is intriguing , because it piques your curiosity as to why there is so much deception and murder in it , and we want to know the real motives and who the real killers are and all that ( or if the parents were really killed at all ) , but like I said before , the movie builds up literally until the point where it ends , leaving us with the feeling that we just watched an entire movie waiting for a revelation that was never revealed . If you're in the mood for a thriller , watch Clay Pigeons or something . The Glass House plays like the script had a lot of stones thrown at it . |
543,946 | 562,732 | 6,333 | 4 | The first submarine photoplay ever filmed ! | When I read during the opening credits of the 1916 adaptation of Jules Verne's " 20 , 000 Leagues Under the Sea , " immediately I assumed the frame of mind that I always do when watching early films , so as not to criticize it's lack of special effects or advanced film techniques . Immediately I was immensely impressed at the transfer from book to film , as the film followed the story closely and faithfully . Unfortunately , this only lasted for about the first ten minutes of the film , which ultimately proved to take Verne's work and butcher it in every way imaginable . Probably the most jarring change to the story is that they decided to not only adapt 20 , 00 Leagues , but also another Verne novel , Mysterious Island , into this film . So the result is that you have two totally different stories taking place that don't at all seem to fit together , until finally they come together in the bizarre conclusion , which makes absolutely no sense in respect to the novel . My current theory is that because so much of the original novel of 20 , 000 Leagues was decades beyond the reach of the filmmakers to be able to put on screen , so they probably had to look to an entirely separate novel just to have enough material to fill a full length film . Sadly , it reminds me of those terrible songs that radio stations sometimes come up with when they combine two popular songs together that have a similar beat , resulting in something that is not quite equal to but definitely less than the originals . One such bizarre hybrid comes to mind involving Closer , by Nine Inch Nails , and Garbage's # 1 Crush . The basic , basic , basic plot structure remains , but literally 95 % of the story is gone . There is rumor of a massive sea monster and the crew of the Abraham Lincoln set off to capture it . Strangely enough , at one point it passes a mere few meters from their ship in broad daylight , and the crew can clearly see the steel plated sides and the rivets holding it together , even the bridge and periscope , and yet they still think it's a sea monster . I'll attribute that to the inability to emulate the Nautilus's movements as described in the novel , but in this way we also have to sacrifice the entirety of the ship's glorious design and function , which is not even described in dialogue . For the most part , we see a single room , which looks like an old Victorian bedroom with one wall that looks like it belongs in a boiler room . Probably the worst crime that the film commits is in the character of Captain Nemo . Granted , Nemo in the novel is not exactly the most charming and charismatic man , but it is as if they set out in this film to create a man as far from the original description as humanly possible . As a result , we get a bizarre spectacle that looks like a disgruntled Santa Clause in blackface . And not only that , throughout the film he gives several displays of compassion that the original Nemo would have scoffed at . Indeed , at one point , he torpedoes a ship , and then afterwards and then almost faints as he worries about the safety of the victims . What the hell ? ? And incidentally , Verne's Nautilus didn't have torpedoes , although he did use it as a ramming weapon . In the film's defense , the underwater photography is truly impressive given the time that it was filmed , and surely knocked 1916 audiences , most of whom had probably never seen the underwater world , out of their seats . This would certainly explain the seemingly endless lingering on these scenes . Their is also an interesting allusion to another Verne novel , as at one point in their underwater tour they come across a decayed shipwreck , which Nemo describes as " the wreck of an old blockade runner . " And the worst thing about the bizarre personification of Nemo in this film is the backstory that was invented for the film which , amazingly , is introduced with this intertitle - " Captain Nemo reveals the tragic secret of his life , which Jules Verne never told . " What follows is the most bizarre story imaginable , which claims that Nemo was previously some kind of empirical royalty who lived in an empire " beyond the sea . " One man wrongs him , which doesn't explain his subsequent disdain , and even hatred , for all of mankind of all nations , nor does anything explain why he took to the sea . And incidentally , Nemo is a man of art , science , biology , history , astronomy , etc . The transition from his old life to the one we see is totally senseless . It may very well be that this was one of the first major films to set the trend of adapting novels to film , and while modern adaptations still make ridiculous changes to story and characters where they don't belong , at least those inexplicable liberties seem to have diminished since 1916 ! |
544,611 | 562,732 | 77,945 | 4 | There's snakes out there this big ? ? | Mountain of the Cannibal God immediately strikes me as almost exactly the same thing as Last Cannibal World with a slightly bigger budget . It seems that the cannibal sub-genre is pretty limited as far as what kinds of things you can do with the story , so I kept my expectations low . Ursula Andress stars as the grieving wife of a man lost in the mysterious jungle , and she is determined to go in after him , although her intentions aren't exactly what they seem to be . I love it when they first enter the jungle , one of the guys says " Don't say a word to anyone , we don't want the police on our tail ! " Yeah , if you're ever going into a cannibal-infested jungle , make sure not to tell anyone where you're going . It would be awful if anyone were able to find you ! The tribe we meet in this installment is the same as the last cannibals , although their animal-like qualities are not quite as blown out of proportion . They are highly barbaric and undeveloped , of course , but this time instead of being too animal-like , they have a genuinely bizarre religion , although ancient religions are not always known for their conduciveness to modern logic . At one point they make a sacrifice for having killed a tarantula , but even more bizarre , when it is revealed that they have turned Susan's ( Andress ) husband into a god by pinning his rotting corpse on some kind of rack , it seems that one of the ways that they worship him is to wipe the pus and mucus from his decaying face and rub it on their own face . Nice . Stacey Keach also shows up in an early role long before his outstanding work in American History X , although he isn't given anything memorable to do here . He eventually reveals that his entire goal of going into the jungle is to find this tribe and destroy them so he can sleep peacefully , I guess . He has the obligatory role of the modern man forced to participate in the cannibalism , and it is properly disgusting . There is a rafting scene near the end of the film that is botched in the way that most b-movies botch something like sky-diving . It is so unrealistic and so campy that it is genuinely amusing . The editing , as well , is unbelievably cheap , like the rest of the movie . But as a cannibal film , this is about what you can expect . Horror fans should be entertained . It's not a classic , but it's a passable sample of its sub-genre . |
544,545 | 562,732 | 89,686 | 4 | Don't let the Fredbugs bite ! HA ! | WOW that was clever . So anyway , as I go back and watch all of those classic old horror films , I increasingly find myself wondering if there is ever again going to be a time when they can be scary again . Sure , today's horror films have had something of a numbing affect on modern audiences , at least as far as being affected by the films of the 80s , but surely those movies were scary back then . I just find myself wondering how that ever was . Now , it's obvious that there are a lot of things that have to be overlooked in order for a film like A Nightmare on Elm Street 2 to be scary again , not the least of which is the difference in high school fashion , which is bordering on being actually shocking , as well as the acting , which was clearly not high on a filmmaker's list of objections back then . The problem , I think , is not things like that , but rather things that I assume were meant to be taken as normal by earlier audiences . Let's say , for example , that you are able to look past the 80's-ness of the music that Jesse Walsh puts on when he is forced by his father to go up to his room and unpack in the house that he hates so much . The much higher obstacle is the antics that he engages in while cleaning his room . He puts on some sunglasses that I won't take the time to describe since my words can not do justice to the goofiness of them , and then he proceeds to dance around his room , singing into a broom handle and throwing his clothes into his drawers ( pausing momentarily , as though proud of this monumental act of defiance ) and then tapping the drawers closed with his butt as he dances . WOW . Did kids really do stuff like this ? Or is this something like the American Pie movies , where movie executives create movies with teenagers acting the way THEY think they should act , whether because this is how they think kids are or because they think this will bring in the biggest profit ( my money's on the latter , by the way ) ? And either way , is there really any way that you can watch a scene like this and then be actually frightened by anything that happens later in the movie ? Or how about this . Jesse's gym teacher is evidently really into dressing up in leather and then hanging out in bars where high school boys are able to walk in and order a beer without showing any ID . I'll leave aside all of the immediate red flags that pop up about the teacher dressing in leather in a joint that is apparently full of drunk teenage boys . We soon see this teacher ( still dressed in leather ) punishing Jesse by making him run laps around the gym back at school . How we got back to campus , I can't say I noticed . After telling Jesse to hit the showers , he heads back to his office , and then calmly watches as basketballs and tennis balls and whatnot fly off of the walls at him like bullets . Okay , so I was in hysterics BEFORE the jump-ropes tied themselves around his wrists and dragged him into the showers , his clothes ripped off along the way . Just the balls flying at him was funny enough , but then he finds himself tied up naked and facing the walls , and get this , towels pick themselves up and start whipping his bare ass ! ! ! Can you imagine ? ? ? This HAS to have been a joke . I understand the need for comic relief in the movies , but I don't know , that's a little too low-brow . It was bad enough to ask the audience to look past that dancing scene a little earlier and then still find something scary in the movie . So that being said , I'd like to go on and talk about what it was in this movie that frightened me out of my chair . Or maybe I should just talk about the uncomfortable scenes . A review of the things that are still scary would be about six words long ( and by the way , those six words can be found in the summary line above ) . The thing that I liked about the first sequel in this seemingly undying horror saga is the way that it adds more to the psychological element of the original premise of the films . Having a horror movie villain that resides in the dreams of his villains is a very good way to avoid the trap of having a stereotypical knife-wielding killer who relentlessly purses his victims , a genre that was started on a large scale with Halloween , and which went precipitously downhill from there . Jesse Walker and his family have moved into the house from the original film , and Jesse finds the diary of the girl who lived in his room , who you might remember from the last film . They throw in another little obstacle for the scariness of the rest of the movie , asking you to believe that even the most basic police investigation failed to turn up the DIARY of the girl who went CRAZY . But I guess it WAS pretty hidden , sitting there in plain sight on the shelf in the closet . So anyway , Jesse finds the girl's diary , reads it for fun , starts to get creeped out when it starts talking about Freddy and the kid getting killed across the street and how now Freddy wants to come and kill her . Surely her psychologist would have been interested in reading this . ( spoilers ) So Freddy now begins to get into Jesse's head and thus begins a spiraling whirlwind of madness as he struggles for his life and people start turning up dead all around him . But there is a definite level of cleverness in this sequel , which is impressive because despite the fact that almost every element of the film itself is obsolete by today's standards , such cleverness was not very necessary to the horror movie audiences of the 80s . In the original film , Freddy turns up and is able to attack his victims in their dreams while they sleep , killing them in real life at the same time . This is an extension of the old saying that if you have a dream that you're falling and you don't wake up before you land , you'll die in real life because your body will think that it's dead and your heart will stop or something . This isn't true , by the way . I've had dreams where I'm falling off a huge building to the sidewalk below , landed on my back and then looked around as people gathered around me , probably marveling that I was still alive and awake . I even had a dream once that I fell off a ship , sank like a stone to about 150 feet in crystal clear water , watching the ship get smaller and smaller on the surface of the water above me , landed on my back , and lay there staring and the ship and marveling at my sudden ability to breathe underwater . Okay , so back to the movie . Rather than turning up in dreams to kill his victims , Freddy has gotten into Jesse's head and has managed to take control of his body . Jesse finds himself witnessing horrible murders , and then when they're over , he finds the blood ( as well as the Edward Scissorhands glove ) on HIS hands . I think it would be useful to point out that not only is this a sequel , but a horror movie sequel , and a sequel to a horror film that was a huge success . Failure is almost prescribed . But I have to give credit for this clever twist on the original premise , which opens up more than enough possibilities for a whole second film to be made . I think that a lot of the reason that sequels to successful films so often fail is because they try so hard to extend the success of the original without adding enough new thought or ideas to make a second films worthwhile . See the Austin Powers films for a perfect example . A Nightmare On Elm Street 2 , however , while undeniably a cheesy 80s horror film , is a goofy horror movie that is notable more for defying the almost inevitable cheesiness of the films of the time than for succumbing to it . |
544,866 | 562,732 | 242,998 | 4 | What an awful mess . | here was no effort put into Valentine to prevent it from being just another teenage slasher film , a sub-genre of horror films of which we have seen entirely too many over the last decade or so . I've heard a lot of people complaining that the film rips off several previous horror movies , including everything from Halloween to Prom Night to Carrie , and as much as I hate to be redundant , the rip off is so blatant that it is impossible not to say anything . The punch bowl over poor Jeremy's head early in the film is so obviously taken from Carrie that they may as well have just said it right in the movie ( ' Hey everyone , this is the director , and the following is my Carrie-rip-off scene . Enjoy ! ' ) . But that's just a suggestion . ( spoilers ) The film is structured piece by piece exactly the same way that every other goofy teen thriller is structured . We get to know some girl briefly at the beginning , she gets killed , people wonder in the old oh - but - that - stuff - only - happens - to - other - people tone , and then THEY start to get killed . The problem here is that the director and the writers clearly and honestly want to keep the film mysterious and suspenseful , but they have no idea how to do it . Take Jason , for example . Here is this hopelessly arrogant guy who is so full of himself and bad with women that he divides the check on a date according to what each person had , and as one of the first characters seen in the film after the brief history lesson about how bad poor Jeremy was treated , he is assumed to carry some significance . Besides that , and more importantly , he has the same initials as the little boy that all the girls terrorized in sixth grade , and the same initials that are signed at the bottom of all of those vicious Valentine's Day cards . It is not uncommon for the audience to be deliberately and sometimes successfully misled by the behavior of one or more characters that appear to be prime suspects , and Jason is a perfect example of the effort , but not such a good example of a successful effort . Sure , I thought for a while that he might very well be the killer , but that's not the point . We know from early on that he is terrible with women , which links him to the little boy at the beginning of the film , but then in the middle of the film , he appears at a party , smiles flirtatiously at two of the main girls , and then gives them a hateful look and walks away , disappearing from the party and from the movie with no explanation . We already know he is a cardboard character , but his role in the film was so poorly thought out that they just took him out altogether when they were done with him . On the positive side , the killer's true identity was , in fact , made difficult to predict in at least one subtle way which was also , unfortunately , yet another rip-off . Early in the film , when Shelley stabs the killer in the leg with his own scalpel , he makes no sound , suggesting that the killer might be a female staying silent to prevent revealing herself as a female , rather than a male as everyone suspects . But then for the rest of the film , we just have this stolid , relentless , unstoppable killer with the emotionless mask and that gigantic butcher knife . Director Jamie Blanks ( who , with all due respect , looks like he had some trouble with the girls himself in the sixth grade ) mentions being influenced by Halloween . This is , of course , completely unnecessary , because it's so obvious from how badly he plagiarizes the film . The only difference between the killer in Valentine and Michael Meyer's is that Michael's mask was so much more effective and he didn't have a problem with nosebleeds . This stuff is shameless . At the end , there is a brief attempt to mislead us one more time as to who the killer is ( complete with slow and drawn out ' and-the-killer-is ' mask removal ) , but then we see Adam's nose start to bleed as he holds Kate , his often reluctant girlfriend , and we know that he's been the killer all along . Nothing in the film hinted that he might be the killer until the final act , and these unexplained nosebleeds were not exactly the cleverest way to identify the true killer at the end of the film . Valentine is not scary ( I watched it in an empty house by myself after midnight , and I have been afraid of the dark for as long as I can remember , and even I wasn't scared ) , and the characters might be possible to care about if it weren't so obvious that they were just going to die . I remember being impressed by the theatrical previews ( although the film was in and out of the theater's faster than Battlefield Earth ) , but the end result is the same old thing . |
544,406 | 562,732 | 118,364 | 4 | Surprisingly boring , by-the-numbers sitcom ? | I saw bits and pieces of Just Shoot Me back when it was on the air so I was eager to get the dvds and check it out for real . I'm a big fan of David Spade's and I'll admit that he was the only reason I bought it , but after watching the first couple seasons I was really surprised at how flat and contrived it is . All of the characters are two-dimensional types ? the filthy rich boss who is lovable even with all of his quirks ( like marrying a woman younger than his daughter ) , you have the boss's daughter anxiously trying to prove she deserves her job beyond the fact that her father owns the magazine , the office slut ( male and female ) , and the witty photographer . The last one is at least a unique character , but still fulfills a pretty thinly veiled niche on the show . Granted , 30 minute sitcoms don't have a history of being the most interesting and complex shows , but Just Shoot Me appears to be shot on a cheaply constructed set and generally takes on cheesy , boring stories , most of which don't go beyond the superficial stories that magazines like Blush generally feature . I remember when I was in high school I once dated this girl who was constantly reading this god-awful magazine called " YM , " which is essentially a glamour magazine for teenagers , and it seems like every single issue that she ever read featured a story on some variation of " What He's REALLY Thinking About , " or some other such nonsense . That was more than ten years ago , and watching this show gives me the feeling that they're still writing that same story . In the show's defense , there are definitely some redeeming moments . It's hard to get David Spade on screen for an entire series and not have some laugh out loud moments , but I have to say that Nina Van Horn's sluttiness and belligerent flirting got real old real quick . To me , her name was about enough . Lauren San Giacomo is given nothing to do except recite her lines and bear goofy jokes about her breasts . She's probably the biggest talent wasted on the show . Despite my lack of interest , I can still tell that there is an audience for this show who will , of course , enjoy it much more than I did . It's essentially a portrayal of someone's idea of what goes on behind the scenes at a fashion magazine . Throw in David Spade with a bunch of models , who generally parade silently across the set , pausing only to evade Spade's ludicrous advances , and you have yourself a sitcom . But if , like me , you don't care what goes on behind the scenes at a fashion magazine , don't bother . |
544,275 | 562,732 | 105,428 | 4 | A good example of why Stephen King rarely writes directly for the screen . | Stephen King writes such a wide variety of fiction and comes out with so many totally different movies that they seem to span almost all genres ( although it's not likely that he is going to come out with a children's movie anytime soon ) . Sleepwalkers is one of the lesser known Stephen King films , and for good reason . For the most part , King , like Steven Spielberg , comes out with two radically different kinds of movies . Spielberg does fun fantasy films like Jurassic Park and Minority Report , and then he does shockingly relevant films like Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan . Similarly , King makes two main genres of films , although not quite the same genres as Spielberg's . He does the hugely successful and well-made films like Hearts In Atlantis , The Green Mile , Stand By Me , and The Shawshank Redemption , but in the tradition of what he is best known for , he also does ( not as much anymore , but almost constantly earlier in his career ) hardcore horror films , which are straight horror and , in many cases , cheesy to the point of being bad ( Graveyard Shift , The Silver Bullet , Creepshow , etc . ) . There are exceptions in both cases , but for the most part , those are the kinds of things that we can expect from them . Sleepwalkers is one of the last sort . A mother and her son move to a small New England town and try to fit in , only to have things go horribly wrong almost from the start . The son , Charles , meets Tanya at a movie theater that doesn't seem to have a single other customer or very good electricity . The blatant attempt to make the set look spooky has resulted only in making it look cheap and fake . It is revealed very early in the film that Charles and his mother Mary are not much interested in following in the footsteps of the Biblical figure after which she was named . They have sex regularly , and she becomes insanely jealous when he meets Tanya , even though we know from the opening credits that they are creatures that feed on virginal human females . While this bit of text at the opening of the film leads you to believe that , at the very least , you are about to watch a movie with a lot of gratuitous and generally unnecessary nudity , the film does not deliver any at all . Instead , we see Charles and Mary move to this town , Charles get involved with the very first girl he meets , and everything falls apart from there . There are so many more things that needed to have been done in this movie . When you look back at it after watching it , it becomes clear how empty the story really is because of how little it told . There are some great cameos in the film , including one from Stephen King himself ( who appears in many of his own films ) , and the police officer with the cat steals every scene that he's in . The horror is bad , the blood excessive and unconvincing , and the comic relief some of the worst I've seen in a horror movie in years . Sleepwalkers is not a complete failure as a horror film , because despite everything counting against it , it manages to entertain , but if you are in the mood for a Stephen King night , you can't really do much worse than this ( note : stay away from Creepshow , too ) . Sleepwalkers is a mildly entertaining but pretty badly made horror film and not much else , but at the very least , it does have an important moral to teach the world ? Anyone who hates cats is obviously a shape-shifting beast that is more monster than human . Please make a note of it . |
544,333 | 562,732 | 89,822 | 4 | Never fool with a fuzz ball . | The first of the more than half a dozen Police Academy sequels took a huge step downwards . It's amazing to think that so many sequels were made when the original wasn't even very good and the sequels were immediately crappy . Then again , with a tagline like " Their First Assignment , " it's impossible to think that they might have stopped making sequels at part 2 . I watched the first two movies a couple days ago and my immediate reaction was to wonder what the original audiences thought of the movies . The comedy is now so dated and goofy that I can't imagine it ever being genuinely funny , except in the way that it's funny to see the things that people wore in the 80s . Times have definitely changed , and one way that they seem to have changed more than anything else , in this movie and countless others , is the way that the outcasts of society dressed . Watch any 80s movie that has gangsters or rappers or punk or any of the above in it , and I challenge you not to laugh out loud at the styles that were ' cool ' back then . Some choice selections in the Friday the 13th series are classic for this kind of comedy , as are the Police Academy sequels . But at any rate , it's important to notice that this kind of thing makes re-watching these old movies more fun , not less . You will find yourself laughing at things completely different from what was originally meant to be funny , but it's still a good time nonetheless . However , the problem with the original movie was the bad jokes that went on for too long . There is a place for tasteless jokes in the movies , but not when they keep going and going until you just feel uncomfortable . When Commandant Lassard was up at that podium attempting to give a speech while the prostitute was behind the curtain , I was trying to imagine someone still laughing by the time it finally stopped and I just couldn't picture it , and part 2 has the same problem . All of the relevant cast are back and they are all graduates now working in the real world . Mahoney is riding a three-wheeler on what looks like the northern part of Santa Monica beach while Tackleberry has managed to secure the top position of a school crossing guard , something that I thought was reserved for elderly citizens looking for volunteer work . Commandant Lassard's brother Pete is introduced as the captain of police precinct 16 , which has finally been awarded the official title of worst precinct in the city , and our dear old police chief Henry Hurst is fed up with all the riffraff . He is giving Pete Lassard 30 days to turn the precinct around before he throws him out and awards his job to Part 2's funniest cast addition Lieutenant Mouser , who easily surpasses the missing Lieutenant Harris from the first movie in oily creepiness and sheer , unapologetic ass-kissing . Pete Lassard thus sets about on a mission to turn his precinct from an embarrassment to a success using the six new recruits awarded to him by his brother , while Mouser sets about on a mission to ensure their failure . So the new recruits are Mahoney , Tackleberry , Hightower , Brooks ( the one with the voice that truly lives up to Mouser's name , which is probably why he picks on her so much ) , Larvell Jones , the guy with the sounds , and Fackler , the geeky , accident-prone white guy with the nutty wife . While it's true that the plot of Police Academy 2 is as thin and see-through as grandma's underpants , I would be lying if I said it was without its amusing moments . Sadly , most of the ones that were meant to be amusing are not . Larvell Jones ' first scene , where he makes bodily noises in a restaurant and ruins the date between some uppity tool and his even more uppity date , is about as un-funny as any failed slapstick skit I've ever seen , but I imagine that at least the epoxy-shampoo gag was once a mildly entertaining joke . But while much of the original comedy has completely disappeared along with Bobcat Goldthwait's bizarre screamy tantrums and Steve Guttenberg's career , there are some other things that remain a bit of fun . Tackleberry's obsession with guns is tied to a total lack of sexual experience in a development of psychological depth that I would never have expected from a Police Academy movie , and while Mahoney's slovenly partner , now better known as the " gas man " from Dumb & Dumber , plays the greasy sloppiness of his character through the roof , you can't help but admire his effort . But that whole third act with Mahoney undercover can just be tossed to the wolves . WOW . Bobcat Goldthwait's entire performance in this movie is ridiculous in the extreme , but at least he was SUPPOSED to look foolish and nuts . Mahoney's undercover act was just stupid , and this is not a term that I use lightly . I've seen all of the Police Academy movies , but before a couple days ago I hadn't seen any of them in at least ten years , and so don't remember anything about any of the other sequels . I can only hope that they get better or at least don't get worse , although it is not very discouraging that my limited perusal of various online reviews names this as one of the " better sequels . " Wish me luck ? |
544,344 | 562,732 | 39,219 | 4 | One of the weakest films of the Stooges collective careers . | I've read a lot of reviews on the IMDb ( well , all five of the ones that have been written at the time that I'm writing this ) and I'm surprised at the amount of praise heaped upon The Brideless Groom , which is undoubtedly one of the lesser comedies performed by the Stooges . I prefer the older ones where it was Larry , Curly and Moe , although Shemp gets credit for most of the funny scenes in Sing a Song of Six Pants , another Stooges short which is only moderately amusing but far superior to Brideless Groom . Indeed , there is a single slightly amusing scene in the film , the " don't-hit-a-lady " scene , which is barely amusing at all and is 15 minutes into the film . Not very promising in a 17-minute comedy . Shemp is a voice trainer whose uncle has passed away and left him an inheritance of $500 , 000 , provided he get married within 48 hours , which is short enough notice as it is , but by the time Shemp learns about it he has only 7 hours left . This is a premise that had been done and redone before , but was not , I don't think , a massive cliché at the time this film was made , as it is now . There are a series of gags throughout the film , none of which are even close to the level of comedy for which the Three Stooges are so widely known . It seems that the Stooges have run into the same troubles that plagued so many of Shirley Temple's films ? there is too little reliance on content and too much reliance just on the fact that they're there . The standard characteristics of the Stooges are here , Moe is the mean one , whose meanness is certainly not used sparingly in this film , and the slapstick sound effects ( although with more exceptions than usual ) are fairly amusing , but are plugged into their standard slots in this film . The line " Hold hands , you lovebirds " is immortal . The rest of the film is not . There is much talk among the other people who have reviewed this movie for this site about this being one of the best of the Stooges shorts , that you won't find one weak moment , about how this is their best since the early 30s shorts . It's just not true . I can certainly understand a level of automatic respect for milestone classics and for the giants of early comedy , which the Three Stooges certainly are , but that respect is damaged when poorer films are praised more than they should be . The Brideless Groom deserves some respect because it is a Stooges film , but for exactly the same reason , it should have been better . The Three Stooges were just better than this . |
543,857 | 562,732 | 93,629 | 4 | Hey , what ever happened to that music video ? | Unless I'm sadly mistaken , I rented A Nightmare on Elm Street 3 several years ago and there was a music video , I'm pretty sure which was called Dream Warriors , at the end of it , and I rented this one on DVD hoping that the video would be there because it was one of the funniest things I've ever seen . It's amazing how stuff from the 80s is so funny now , but nothing is funnier than 80s rap videos . There was this rap group singing that song Dream Warriors on the VHS version of this movie after the credits , and they're all wearing like denim jackets with no shirt underneath and form fitting jean shorts that are all frayed at the bottoms like Daisy Dukes . What could make a rap group look more foolish I can't imagine . ( spoilers ) At any rate , I was disappointed in looking for that video on the DVD version , so all I had was this mediocre installment in the Freddy Krueger series . The movie sort of starts off with the same idea as part 2 , with the main character witnessing all kinds of gruesome murders and then sort of coming out of a trance and finding himself with the bloody hands . Kristen Parker ( Patricia Arquette ) has a nightmare about the infamous house that Nancy Thompson used to live in , then runs to the bathroom , the sink's handles turn into Freddy's hands and attack her , and then she wakes up standing in her bathroom having slit her own wrists . From there , the movie turns into the usual mental hospital installment . ' Larry ' Fishburne , tired of always playing the bad guy in his roles , was happy to take on the role in this film as a nice-guy orderly , stern but accommodating when the patients want to bend the rules a little . Not surprisingly , he turns in what is by leaps and bounds the best performance in the movie . Arquette later goes on to become an accomplished actor , but had not perfected her acting skills when she starred in this film . The characters in the movie are mostly all patients at the mental hospital that Kristen is placed into after cutting her wrists . All of them are cynical and uncooperative , almost none believing that they really belong there at all . Eventually , they realize and are able to convince the staff that they are all having dreams about the same man and it's not just some kind of group hysteria . Heather Langenkamp has returned in her famous role as Nancy Thompson , this time grown up into a dream researcher as a result of her childhood experiences involving Freddy Krueger . Not surprisingly , she is able to quickly relate to the hysterical Kristen and the rest of the patients , since she had experienced exactly what they're going through . There are some interesting murders in this installment , and the technology used for the special effects have taken a huge jump . There is a gigantic , worm-like Freddy that tries to swallow Kristen whole , there is a scene where a television turns into Freddy and with mechanical arms he picks up one of the patients there for some late night entertainment and punishes her for sitting too close to the TV , but there is also an unconvincing go-motion scene where a couple guys have a fight with Freddy Krueger's skeleton , which has been rotting in the trunk of some car in a car junkyard . And one of the more groan-inducing scenes was one where Freddy attacks one of the patients in his dream ( the one famous for sleepwalking ) , tearing the muscles and tendons out of his arms and legs and leading him around like a puppet . Ouch . We get a peek into Freddy's past in this installment . Not only do we meet his mother , but we also find out the circumstances that led to Freddy being fathered by more than 100 maniacs . In fighting Freddy , the patients all band together and , in their dreams , use their special powers ( most of which reflect their shortcomings in real life ) to fight him . One student , bound to a wheelchair , is able to walk in his dreams , another has the hilarious powers of what he calls the ' Wizard Master , ' another is ' beautiful and bad ' ( she has lots of makeup , her hair stands up in a foot-high Mohawk , and she has knives ) . Clever , but the movie falters when it has only one of the patients , the one who can't speak , not have any powers in his dreams until the climax of the movie , when he suddenly realizes that he can talk in his dreams ( at just the right moment to save the day ) . His dream power was a little too obvious to have been left out for that long , but collectively , now you see why the movie was subtitled Dream Warriors . Altogether , this is not an entirely weak entry into the series . The acting is pretty shoddy , but it's actually pretty good for a horror movie . Larry Fishburne vastly overshadows the rest of the cast , displaying wonderful acting skills early on in his career , and the movie is not simply a rehash of either of the first two ? a problem that plagues the Friday the 13th movies much more than the Elm Street films . The characters are never developed enough to allow for the later creation of much tension , which is why most of the deaths come across more as creative ways to kill off someone in a horror film than the tragic loss of the life of one of the characters that we've come to know and root for their triumph over evil . But then again , not a lot of horror movies take the time to really develop their characters to the point where you throw up your hands in defeat when they are killed , or are on the edge of your seat as they run for their lives . But it's important to note that the few horror films that actually do that are almost invariably the best ones ? |
544,787 | 562,732 | 91,474 | 4 | Manhunter is a perfect example of how easily a truly exceptional crime novel can be badly screwed up when made into a movie . | Did you read the novel " Red Dragon , " by Thomas Harris , the book on which Manhunter is based ? If not , watch the movie , you'll probably love it . However , if you have read the book , be advised that the movie will disappoint you in every way you can imagine . Red Dragon was just a great book . The story was intense , and it was extremely difficult to put down . Given that , it is hard for me to understand what would make Michael Mann think that he should change anything in the story . While not necessarily really pretty , the ending in the book was different and completely unexpected . It left you with that " wow " feeling that is so satisfying , especially when you almost unconsciously expect a flowery ending . I would have LOVED to see that put on film ! But no , Mann decides to scrap the surprise ending and slap on a cutesy Hollywood ending . That really ps me off . Can I say that ? And it's not just the ending , by the way , there were enormous chunks of the story that were simply not included in the film . ENORMOUS chunks of the story . This movie would have been so much better if it remained faithful to the full story presented in the book . Not only that , but they obviously hired some idiot to do the casting . Brian Cox performs horribly as the evil supergenius Hannibal Lector , but that may be a result of the fact that I had already seen Anthony Hopkins ' performance of the same character ( one of the best performances I have ever seen on film ) before I saw Manhunter . I'm sure Michael Mann felt like a complete idiot when Silence of the Lambs was released . Tom Noonan was HORRIBLY miscast as Francis Dolarhyde , the insecure serial killer in Manhunter . Oh , did you not know that he was insecure ? That's because those idiots didn't put anything about that in the movie , even though this extreme insecurity ( the background of which was also left out of the film ) is the fundamental reason for Dolarhyde's homicidal tendencies . If you liked this movie , I can understand why . It was an entertaining enough film . But I can also tell that if you liked this movie you did not read the book . The book is about 10 , 000 times better than the movie , and the conversion from book to film is so manipulative and disappointing and generally poor that once you realize what has been left out , it is almost painful to watch . Basically , what they did was they took a spectacular book and made it into a run-of-the-mill crime film . For shame . |
543,973 | 562,732 | 120,604 | 4 | Boring , clichéd story that is clumsily presented in a film plagued by botched direction , awful editing , and goofy acting . | Beowulf provides a perfect example of why actors should never alter their voices in films , at in a way in which they seem to be trying to make themselves sound like toughened warriors , or at least make themselves sound like they're pissed off all the time . Christopher Lambert's first line in this film ( ' Let her go . ' ) is delivered in this way , and it's actually pretty effective . He sounds intimidating , and he even makes you glad that you are not one of the people that he is talking to . Unfortunately , he never stops talking like this , and it makes the rest of the movie ridiculous . This is exactly the same way that Wesley Snipes ruined Blade . Besides the awful special effects and the groan inducing performances delivered by everyone involved , Beowulf even sinks to the level of semi erotica , with several misplaced ' almost'-nude scenes that just should not have been in this movie . This is just your basic good vs . evil mediocre adventure film that leaves a bad taste . Very disappointing . |
544,592 | 562,732 | 303,816 | 4 | An odd twist on the horror genre that doesn't really lead anywhere . | Pretty much the only interesting thing about Cabin Fever is that there really isn't a bad guy . It's a goofy teenage horror film about a lot of college kids that go out to the woods to act out all their impulses , kind of like the kids in just about every Friday the 13th film , and then they all start dying . Cabin Fever's contribution to the genre is that they all start getting killed , but by some kind of disease and not by a faceless slasher as in so many other modern horror films . Granted , this is also not the most original idea , but at least it's something a little different . The problem with that premise is that it really leaves no room for any kind of motive behind the killings , and so renders some characters so outlandish that they make the whole film look more clownish than it should , such as the college-age police officer more obsessed with partying than law enforcement . Another little problem with the rampant disease that eats away at the cast is that the movie never explains what it is or where it came from . Yes , there is some sort of stagnant lake with a dead body floating in it , which apparently leaks the disease into the drinking water . But what , is the flesh-eating disease a byproduct of the decay of that body ? Is it some sort of biological weapon that was accidentally released ? Purposely released ? Tested and forgotten , but still active ? Probably not many people care , especially in this movie's audience . Horror movies are famous for defying all manner of reality-based logic , I don't know why I can't help wondering about things like that . If you can overlook the spontaneous generation of this disease , the movie still doesn't really go anywhere . It's difficult for a movie to create tension when the killer is an airborne disease . Or foodborne . Or waterborne . Or whatever it was . In the movie's defense , it is unusually aptly named . The idea of having a lot of college students go into the woods , carelessly blowing off the backwards mountain people that warn them all along the way , is nothing new . This is the biggest cliché in the movie by far . The characters are just as meaningless and one-dimensional as in the vast majority of horror movies , but I think that the real problem with this one is the same sort of thing that was wrong with Hollow Man a few years ago . There are so many possibilities , and had the movie taken only a few slightly different turns , it would have been enormously better than it was . Plague films , for example , can be almost as endlessly fascinating as time travel films , but they have to be innovative and do something interesting with the overall premise . You can't make a time travel movie , for example , and simply have the characters find themselves in the wrong time and then spend an hour and forty minutes trying to get back . Cabin Fever is about a lot of college kids that go out into the woods , start to catch the mysterious disease , and spend the rest of the movie trying to get back out of the woods . Yawn . The beginning of the film shows an example of the lack of creativity that plagues the rest of the movie ( no pun intended ) . As the characters stop at a local corner store on their way into the deep dark woods , there is a little blonde-haired boy sitting on a bench out front . When one of the guys goes to shake his hand , the kid grabs it and tries to take a bite out of it . No reason is given for the kid being a little strange other than that he's one of the backwoods rednecks . The boy's father , emerging cockily from the store as though he has no idea that these kids could slap him with an enormous lawsuit ( one of them even mentions it , then walks away as though the idea were ridiculous ) , tells the bite victim basically to be more careful and oh by the way , there's a stream out back you wanna go wash your hand . Not only does the guy idiotically go out back and wash his hand in the river water ( hardly the most sanitary place , even when there aren't diseases floating through it ) , but when a couple strange dogs wander up to him , he pets and plays with them eagerly . Personally , strange dogs are the last things I'd want to be touching after having been bitten already by a strange kid . Thus enters the dogs , one of the more pointless elements of the film . The majority of the tension comes from the characters trying to quarantine themselves from the diseased man who wanders out of the woods , the rabid dogs that periodically come out of nowhere , and eventually from each other as they start to get sick themselves . Even worse , when the police eventually do show up , they come in the form of a single frat-boy officer who asks the guy there if there was a disturbance , then hearing that there was , goes on to talk about how he must like to party with his girlfriend , wink wink . He talks about the best places to party and the best ways to avoid your party being broken up , all while standing within arm's reach of the kids ' truck , beaten and broken and splattered with blood . Who wrote this character ? I've been on a horror kick recently , so I've seen tons and tons of really really bad movies lately , but this is one of the worst written parts I've ever seen . The gore in the movie is interesting , often going so over-the-top that it's hard to miss homages to such famously over-the-top films as The Evil Dead and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre . The effects of the virus on victims includes sweating blood , apparently , as well as projectile vomiting it in massive quantities . There are some genuinely squirm-inducing scenes , such as a character late in the film noticing a dead body floating in a lake and then falling on top of it , and one of the girls shaving her legs , revealing that the virus has eaten away the flesh under the shaving cream ( although this last is more disturbing at her dedication to be nice and silky smooth even though the skin on her leg is rotting off ) . Clearly , there are mountains of possibilities for a premise involving a flesh-eating virus and a lot of kids who don't even know how it's transmitted trying to get away from it and then away from each other when others in their party start to vomit blood all over the truck . Unfortunately , the movie is brought down by the movie's failure to actually capitalize on any of those possibilities . The movie tiredly retreads the same old ground covered by countless other horror films , replacing the masked slasher with a flesh-eating virus . A noble effort , I have to say , but it could have been so much better with such a small amount of extra effort . Sadly , the best thing about this movie is an extra feature on the DVD labeled ' Pancakes . ' That is one of the funniest things I've seen in quite some time . |
544,112 | 562,732 | 93,692 | 4 | The first and only Rocky spin-off ? | So I had been under the impression that the United States Military taught things like respect and honor and loyalty and determination . In Over The Top , we are introduced to the graduating class of what I imagine is something like the Junior Marines , where a trucker named Lincoln Hawk has an estranged son celebrating his successful completion of the program . But just when you might think that this place is turning out honorable and respectful young men , we meet Hawk's son , an arrogant little punk more in need of a smack than Rocky's son in Rocky 5 . And that is BAD . He immediately berates Lincoln for his dirty truck and scruffy appearance , wildly disrespecting him and acting like a snotty rich kid . Do you meant to tell me that this place , representing the United States of America , is churning out little punks that demand club soda with lemon when offered water ? Over The Top was released into theaters just over four months before Full Metal Jacket . This may be part of the reason why so few people remember this movie . At any rate , Lincoln ran out on his family when his son Michael was a baby , so Michael was raised by his wealthy grandfather . Now Lincoln wants to make amends for past mistakes , so he picks up Michael from his military school and takes him on a cross-country road trip home . At first Michael is an insufferable jerk , but ultimately warms up to Lincoln as Lincoln teaches him , through arm-wrestling , that he learned nothing about being a man in his time at the military school , but now Lincoln can teach him all he needs to know about manhood and fatherly responsibility by arm-wrestling a lot of sweaty meatheads . I love the realism in the movie . Lincoln Hawk is a quiet , respectful man who only wants to have a relationship with his son . He honestly regrets his past mistakes and will do anything to make them right . Nevertheless , Michael's grandfather wants him out of Michael's life so badly that , even after Lincoln drives his semi-truck through the man's multi-million dollar mansion , he offers to drop all charges if Lincoln will just leave the state . Really ? That's all ? After what must have been hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage inflicted with a deadly vehicular weapon ? I guess so , because Lincoln has no choice but to accept . So he loses his son , sells his meager truck , and heads off to the arm-wrestling world championships in Vegas . I didn't know there WAS an arm-wrestling world championship , but no matter . Lincoln enters as pretty much an unknown , and bets $7 , 000 on himself with 20 : 1 odds . Soon after entering the contest , we hear a broadcaster announce that each contestant can lose once and still have a second chance , and immediately the rest of the movie is spelled out with such clarity that you may notice a distinct sense of deja-vu permeating the rest of the film . I love the other arm-wrestlers , by the way . They are belligerent , mindless morons who are more like apes than men . Professional wrestlers were hired for the movie , but someone should have told them that they are not doing the soap opera of professional wrestling in this movie , and that maybe they could act a little more human than they are used to . Nope , not in this movie ! We get interviews with some of them where they say things like " My whole body is an engine , and this here's the fireplug . And I'm gonna light him up ! " Interesting thoughts , you knob . Others just scream and roar at each other like hyenas , but not Lincoln , he calmly gets on camera and he's not really in it for the money , he just really needs the brand new semi-truck that they're giving away to the winner . I appreciate that it really gets you to root for him , but a LITTLE bit of realism wouldn't have hurt either . Grandpa , for example , comes back at one point and offers Lincoln a brand new truck with a full-sized trailer AND $500 , 000 in cash just to quit the contest . What is that ? Lincoln must surely have done something much worse than drive through the man's front yard for him to make an offer like that just to get Lincoln out of Michaels ' life , but we're left to wonder what that might have been . The biggest problem is that it's just a little too obvious that the movie is a spin-off of the character of Rocky Balboa , with his charm and honesty at war with the vicious world around him . Here , Lincoln is just a simple man wanting to bring his family back together , and the cruel world doing everything possible to keep them apart . The arm-wrestling competition , and particularly the grand prize , was just a little too tailor-made for Lincoln's particular needs . Overall the movie is about genuine repentance after a terrible mistake , and it delivers the message well and it's even a pretty fun ride for a lot of the time , but while the cheese factor is often the best part of a movie like this , here it is just a little too much for the movie to be good and not quite enough for the movie to be fun . |
544,002 | 562,732 | 116,225 | 4 | Horrendously prophetic . | So I watched Escape From L . A . after having recently made my way through both of Bruce Campbell's books ( the latter , unfortunately , seeming to have been thrown through the publication process simply because of the cult success of his literary debut ) , and I have been half-heartedly watching all of the films that he was in . Sadly , his role in this movie is one of the most ridiculous that I have ever seen , and I mean in general , not just Bruce Campbell roles . He is the epitome of the doomed B-movie actor , but why hire someone with such a massive cult following only to completely change his appearance in the movie ? I find it difficult to believe that they worried about him bringing down the Hollywood status of the movie ; Kurt Russell is one of my heroes , but he's hardly a Hollywood superstar . I saw Escape From New York when I was a kid , and I remember hating it passionately , and although I found this movie to be highly unimpressive , I wouldn't say that I hated it . It makes quite a strong political commentary , with a religious fanatic in the White House ( this time , frighteningly , appointed to a lifetime term ) , whose own daughter , curiously named Utopia , says things like " Now is the time to rise up against the president's corrupt theocracy of lies and terror ! ! " Mr . President has decided to move the nation's capital from Washington D . C . to his hometown , Lynchburg , Virginia . Lynchburg ? LA , at any rate , is now " the city of sin " ( which makes me wonder how Vegas is doing ) , and Snake Plissken ( Kurt Russell ) , is " the most notorious criminal in US history . " As is to be expected , no attempt is made to assign Plissken with a history that would in any way justify such a title , we just need to know that he's a real bad guy . He runs around talking like a real bad guy and acting like a real bad guy , all the while trying to retrieve an antidote from the real bad guys ( the government ) who have infected him with a virus which will give him 10 hours to retrieve a stolen black box containing the codes to control the world's energy transmission satellites . That , unfortunately , is not only more of a mouthful than I can form into a coherent sentence , but is also more of a mouthful than this movie can handle . Any movie with a main character that is called " the most notorious criminal in US history " and then later features that same character surfing a tsunami wave down Wilshire Blvd . in Los Angeles and then jumping onto the back of a moving car off of his surfboard is living dangerously if it tries to support too complex a premise . He is also , at one point , forced to play basketball for his life . There is something of a duality in this movie , in that it could just as easily be enjoyed by people who are genuinely impressed with the story , acting , and special effects as it could be by people who look at it as great fun just because of how wildly over the top it is . I guess I fall somewhere in between , because I thoroughly enjoy watching bad movies , although I have a hard time with special effects in general , which so often are a tool to cover shortcomings in other areas . This movie is packed with both special effects and shortcomings , so maybe the combination of the two creates something that is more than the sum of its parts . On the other hand , maybe it just comes out as a great big senseless mishmash of shoddy production values . Either way , I had a blast watching for the LA landmarks ? |
544,289 | 562,732 | 118,421 | 4 | It's like Prison Break without the " break , " and taking place in a high school rather than a prison . | First of all , season 1 is intolerably bad . The prison is ridiculously unrealistic , the characters are so two dimensional they're nearly transparent , and the direction is terrible . It runs like a bad video of a junior high school play , characters wandering past the camera and uttering highly timed and rehearsed lines , passing off as random prison talk . Soon the show gets better , but not by much . The return from the commercial break is always accompanied by some ridiculous monologue by wheelchair-bound Augustus Hill , who is played impressively by Harold Perrineau . The only time his character is consistently bad is during the bad performance art monologues , most of which take place in an inexplicable rotating glass cube and generally have nothing to do with what's taking place in the show . Unfortunately , the bad ideas in Oz could fill an encyclopedia of several volumes . Consider the whole situation , first of all . Prisoners are able to hang out in plain sight getting drunk , doing drugs , and they not only have CD players ( CDs ? ? They might as well pass out steak knives ) , but all incoming mail is thoroughly examined by PRISONERS . Christ , the place is like a men's club with guards . Guards that don't do much . Near the end of season two , an older prisoner's grandson is diagnosed with leukemia , and all of the prisoners pitch in thick wads of $20 and $50 bills to help send him to Disneyworld to fulfill his dying wish . These have to be the richest prisoners in the world . Every single prisoner in Oz all of a sudden became caring , loving guys except Kenny Wangler , an irritating character but one of the only ones who is consistently convincing . Even Adibisi wanted to be nice . But that's okay , because there is no order or sense in the show , so even this is not much of a distraction . Later , shockingly , there is a boxing scene in which one inmate is wearing an " I Love Cops " t - shirt . In prison ! ! Can you imagine ? ? I have a cousin who was in prison a few years ago . I sent him an old picture of us with some friends in high school , and in the picture , one of my friends was holding an " I Love Cops " bumper sticker , and one of " the woods " ( guys who have been in prison for years and years ) saw the picture but just grabbed it and ripped it to shreds . My cousin got lucky . Kenny Wangler also constantly berates the guards and even more senior officers for not calling him Bricks . One of them even tried to bribe him to go to an English class . You may lose track of who is in charge , the prisoners or the guards . More than one investigator , for example , goes into the prison undercover and gets killed trying to stop the drug trade . Personally I would just stop letting prisoners inspect incoming mail rather than risk the lives of investigators . Let's see , what else ? Shillinger's son OD's in solitary and no one thinks to ask the guard how he got the drugs . He just . . . got them , I guess . And make sure to pay attention , otherwise you'll miss the reason why the prisoners have enough money to be able to afford ascellular dermal grafts when they get bad gums . I didn't know guests in maximum security prisons were afforded such luxurious treatment options . How about this , when Robson asks about Dr . Faraj's schedule so he can ask what race of gums he was given , Faraj is so terrified that he goes to the warden and quits his job on the spot . Do doctors and dentists not have the right to request not to see certain prisoners ? After Poet and O'Reilly make the announcement to the entire prison , Robson asks to see Dr . Faraj , and is escorted to his office , brought in without knocking , and the guard promptly leaves without a word . They might as well give him a gun . I shouldn't go on about stupid ideas in this show , but it's like a flood , I can't stop it . Who thought of the Chinese refugees who can't speak Chinese and who disappear en masse from sight unless they're needed ? Who thought of the goofy religious wars and all the reverend prisoners ? Who though of Robson's gum transplant ? What's the deal with Busmalis and Agamemnon ? Agamemnon because he clearly doesn't belong in prison and Busmalis because of the whole thing with his grandson . Macbeth , because it was nothing but a ridiculous means to an end , as it were . But what are the worst ideas ? Things that go nowhere , which are constant . An Irish man comes to the prison and builds a bomb . He threatens to blow up the entire prison , the bomb turns out to be a dud , and the episode ends with him being led away by the bomb squad after the entire prison is evacuated . Nothing is ever heard from him or about the whole situation again . It's like it never happened . In one episode , prisoners are given dogs to train . What the hell ? ? If that wasn't bad enough , during one training session , a guard fires his gun inside the prison walls as a training exercise . No one seems to mind . I also like how anytime some kind of altercation breaks out , the culprits are pulled aside , they don't say anything , and the guards or warden or sister Pete or whoever always says , " I hope you don't think I'm gonna let this go ! ! " And then they walk away and let it go . The audience won't remember . Maybe I'm spoiled by Prison Break , but Oz is just a goofy prison drama that might be better as a play . A short one . At least a low-budget movie . There is just not enough here to sustain a multi-season TV show . Then again , I watched six seasons of it on DVD . Sometimes I don't understand myself . . . |
543,760 | 562,732 | 98,105 | 4 | Actual quote - " Fighting is one thing . But bad jokes is where I draw the line . " | Like the last movie , Police Academy 6 starts out with Harris and Proctor on some ridiculous mission to outsmart the rest of the crew and ensure that they get all of the glory for something or other . At least this time they're not breaking and entering like they were in the last movie , but have stationed them on a stake-out at a location that they are sure is going to be the next hit for the dreaded Wilson Heights Gang who , if nothing else , should definitely find someone else to come up with a threatening name so they'll sound more like a group of hardcore criminals and less like a gated community . But in other news , Harris is in charge of his own precinct now , Tackleberry's got a son , and some old characters like Mrs . Feldman and Fackler are back . I have to admit that I am still confused by feelings of reminiscence for Mahoney , not the least reason for which is that , believe it or not , this is the first genuinely stupid entry in the entire series . Yeah , they're slapstick comedies , but my god , how many decades have people been splitting their sides watching slapstick comedies ? You could argue that the slapstick was the first real narrative story-telling that came along in film , and the Police Academies are no different , they just haven't stood up to the test of time so well . Oh , and they're also hampered by stupid-ass sequels like this one and the next one . And hopefully not part 8 which , at this point , remains theoretical . So what's going on this time ? We have another small group of mind-bogglingly stupid bad guys , which is not a bad thing in itself , but apparently someone took my words too seriously when I originally reviewed Police Academy 5 and said that the movies are essentially kid's movies , because in this installment we get a cartoonish villain that is a bizarre combination of the Wizard of Oz and Dr . Claw from Inspector Gadget . I guess I should be more careful what I say when I review movies . On the other hand , the first time I ever reviewed Police Academy 5 was about 22 minutes ago , so there is some legitimacy to the theory that it couldn't have affected the thought patterns of screenwriters Neal Israel and Pat Proft , who wrote Police Academy 6 back in the late 80's . But you never know . But get this , here's the supervillain's scheme ? he plans to use his henchmen to raise the crime rate in a certain strategic location in order to drive down property values , then he'll buy up all the property himself , see that the crime rate goes back down and the property values up , and then live like a king off the interest or whatever for the rest of his life . Actually , when you think about it , that's not the dumbest plot pattern . In fact , compared to how moronic the rest of the movie is , it's not that bad . At least they didn't have a villain who tried to outdo even the most outlandish 007 villains and like , you know , hold the sun for ransom or something . Again , most of the original cast is back , but I still miss Mahoney and Zed , and the screenwriters ( yeah , it took more than one to come up with this thing ) unfortunately have no idea what to do with the characters that we've come to know and love laughing at . Everyone is undercover and their ridiculous assignments are supposed to generate automatic laughs from us , but worst of all , some of the scenes are such disassociated skits from the plot that the story as a whole falls apart . For example . in one attempt to get into a public place and question the public about the whereabouts of the criminals and whatnot , Jones , Calahan and Hooks go into a bar , where Jones puts on a show for all the barflies doing a brilliant impression of Jimi Hendrix to the delight of the crowd and then they leave without having learned or even trying to learn anything . But at least it's in keeping with the rest of the movie , which is the first tremendous step down into the depths of idiocy in the entire series . If you thought any of the previous movies were stupid , MAN you're gonna love this one ! But I do have to say that , like part 5 , there are some moments in this one that I distinctly remember loving to death when I was about ten years old , like the scene where the huge bad guy who looks like a lumberjack comes outside with an ice-cream cone with like eight scoops of ice cream stacked up on it and goes , " Oh BOY ! " but then takes one lick , pushing it off where it lands with an audible splat on the pavement and he goes , " Crapola ! " Okay , so it's not funny in writing . Sue me . But show me a ten year old kid who doesn't laugh at that and I'll show you a kid with some developmental problems that far exceed any of the time-wasting nonsense in this movie . By the way , as I mentioned in my review of part 5 , make sure to watch the little reminiscent documentary that you'll find on the DVD , it might be funnier than anything in the whole movie ! Check this out , besides glorifying the movie like it's some overlooked Oscar winner , director Peter Bonerz ( my god , can you imagine having THAT name in junior high school ? ) lists off the numerous references and homaaaaaages that can be found within its pristine contents , including everything from Orson Welles to Hitchcock himself ! Sadly , your brain has to be securely in the " off " position in order to enjoy the movie , but it may add to the comedy just to know that some effort was put in to put those references in there ! ! |
543,810 | 562,732 | 475,355 | 4 | Thin portrayal of 1970s racism . Mr . Ellis deserves a better movie . | It's important to keep in mind the real meaning of the phrase " Inspired by a true story " when watching Pride . It's sort of like " You could save up to 50 % , " which can quite literally be translated to " You can't save more than 50 % . " It all sounds great until you realize that the lower part of " up to " is " zero . " Similarly , " inspired by a true story " means that someone heard a story and it made them think of this one . The only certainty is that the real story and the one you're about to see are not the same thing . There is a real Jim Ellis that began coaching the swim team at the Philadelphia Department of Recreation in the early 1970s , but I have a feeling that the real Jim Ellis must not have been able to conceal some feelings of disappointment at the way the movie turned out . Clearly , it takes wild liberties with the story of his life , and I just picture him responding to the strange looks of his friends who wonder why the movie is so much different than the man they know . At any rate , one thing that he will surely be proud of is that he is portrayed by Terrence Howard , one of our finest actors , who starred alongside Bernie Mac who , despite the lack of an original and powerful story , still gives a heartfelt and moving performance . The movie takes place in 1970s Philadelphia , a time and place where racism was the norm , not the exception , and the educated and professional Jim Ellis , who is also an accomplished swimmer , is having trouble finding a worthwhile teaching position , until finally relegated to a falling apart recreation center , which he is assigned the task of cleaning up before its demolition . We can certainly understand his feeling of belittlement . When we first meet Elston , the maintenance man ( Bernie Mac ) , he is a disillusioned grump who sits in his office surrounded by piles of junk that touch the ceiling and watching daytime TV on an old , dusty television set . Needless to say , when Jim shows up to start cleaning the place up and clearing it out , Elston is not exactly friendly with him . He knew his rec center was being closed , and all his anger about that transferred quite smoothly onto Jim . Given his past as a college swimmer , Jim takes a special interest in the pool , which he cleans and fills and brings to top shape . A group of black teenagers who play basketball just outside the rec center take interest in the pool when their basketball rim is taken away and the heat remains stifling , and soon the group have a developing swim team on their hands , which they enter into a citywide swim meet . To call them underdogs , of course , would be something of an understatement . They're unorganized , unprofessional , insufficiently trained , and have no idea how to behave at a swim meet . That doesn't matter , of course . The movie is your standard underdog sports story , so the first athletic outing is totally unimportant as anything other than a learning experience , a catalyst to drive their much harder and much more focused training that will lead up to the final athletic outing , the one that matters . By now , the only thing a sports movie has going for it is that the protagonist ( s ) do not have to win at the film's climax , we only have to understand the meaning and significance of their effort . Sadly , the movie has all of the character development of an old Seagal movie . The good guys are the good guys because they're just supposed to be , and the bad guys are the nasty white swimmers who laugh and jeer and make racist jokes at our team . Oh , and there's one scene where one of the white guys kicks one of the black guys underwater while in the middle of a race . I didn't know it was really possible to kick someone underwater like that , but you get the idea of how deep the character development is . We understand that this is the group of kids that Jim Ellis turned from kids hanging out on the streets doing nothing with their lives and into an organized and competitive team of swimmers , but other than that we don't really get to know anything about who they are . But the biggest problem is that the only real statements that the movie makes are that effort and organization lead to success and racism is bad . Both of these are so obvious that when a movie is made with them alone it ends up feeling empty and unnecessary . Racism was so much more powerful in America in the 1970s that it feels like an enormous loss that the movie dealt directly with that issue but didn't really say anything about it . It's sort of a feel - good movie , but when it's over and you realize how much it should have said is much bigger than what it said , the feel-good sensation turns into a sad disappointment . |
544,266 | 562,732 | 454,824 | 4 | The Complete Idiot's Guide to World War I . | It is hard to imagine someone making a bad film about the world's first fighter pilots , but they managed to pull it off with Flyboys . It has all of the textbook ingredients of a disastrously botched war film ? cheap special effects , moderately talented actors ( except for the wasted talents of Jean Reno , who towers over the rest of the cast as though they were children ) , a stupid , stupid love story , and a director who could theoretically design exciting dogfighting scenes if he had the right special effects department and technology ( which he doesn't ) but who can't direct actors to save his life . I say that he can't direct actors , by the way , because every actor in the film seems to deliver a performance distantly below his or her potential ( most notably Jean Reno and James Franco ) . The movie as a whole is a disjointed mess , alternately swapping from intense aerial fight scenes to moody , contemplative in between scenes , where soldiers get drunk and mourn their fallen friends and sometimes discuss the meaning of life and death and battle and war and camaraderie and love and whatnot . What is really disappointing about the movie is that the dogfight scenes are by far the best thing that the film has going for it , but they screw it up by allowing pilots to fly alongside each other and give congratulatory nods to each other after each kill , and of course the leaders of each side have time to fly in circles and give each other dirty looks before trying to shoot each other down . Not only do the pilots nod and gesture to each other in the air , they even yell at each other . Are we expected to believe that they can hear each other , or even themselves , for that matter , over the roar of the wind and the propeller six feet in front of their face ? The problem here is not that the pilots interact with each other in ridiculous ways in the air , but that the entire dogfight scenes are constructed with that same mentality . A bad guy has a chance to shoot down our hero , but instead flies alongside and salutes him , and they each fly their separate ways , their faith in humanity restored . There is a super villain on the German side who shoots downed pilots while they stand helpless on the ground , and of course he has a climactic battle with the leader on the American side who , by the way , must be given a LION as a pet in order for the audience to understand that he is the brooding alpha male . PLEASE . When you take into account all of the ridiculously unbelievable events that take place during the dogfights , as well as the few battles that take place on the ground , it becomes impossible to take the film seriously . At one point , one of the Americans is shot down and crashes right next to the German trenches . Not about to leave a man behind , James Franco's character lands his plane nearby and sprints directly past the trenches , which are packed full of what can only be described as Germany's worst riflemen , to get him out of his predicament . I love the tactical thinking here . A fellow pilot is pinned down by German firepower , so rather than flying over the trenches and laying waste to the ranks of riflemen with the gun on his plane , he lands nearby and runs over to become pinned down himself . But wait , he landed not because his friend was being shot at , but because in the crash , his plane had tipped over forwards and landed upside down , crushing his hand . Below is an actual dialogue sample : " Can you move ? " " No , something's pinning my hand ! " Yeah , that's an AIRPLANE . Maybe you didn't notice it there . And I'm sorry , I really am , but rather than dig out some of the soft dirt underneath it , I'll just cut your hand off . Sorry there , buddy ! What you have here is World War I re-imagined by a lot of guys sitting in front of expensive computers in West Hollywood , guys who have even less of an idea of what aerial combat was like in WWI than I do . And it doesn't help that they try to force this preposterous romance between Franco and a French girl , whose 9-year-old nephews try to teach her English , yet all she can get out is " How you are ? " Maybe it's because I'm an English teacher myself , but it always drives me crazy when I see movies that feature characters who don't speak a word of English , then after a few shots of them practicing a line or two or reading from a book , in the next scene they speak nearly perfect English , they just keep their accent . The Terminal committed this crime in spectacular fashion , but at least that was an otherwise entertaining film . This is a nauseating war hero fantasy filled with romantic nonsense . At least the movie attempts to right the romantic wrong in the closing credits , but that doesn't change what we've seen so far . The film does have its moments , the first 30 minutes or so are fairly entertaining , but overall it is a big-budget B-movie , at best . But the kids would probably enjoy it . |
544,778 | 562,732 | 130,623 | 4 | Is this a kid's movie ? | Dinosaur is not even a breakthrough in computer generated effects for Disney . That title is reserved for the spectacular hit Toy Story . What you have in Dinosaur is basically a re-make of The Land Before Time , with the cell animation replaced with computer generated images . The story is so unoriginal that the end result could be referred to simply as " yet another Disney movie . " However , this time the normally ingenius Disney product seems to be alienating its biggest target audience , the younger viewers . They tried to make this movie TOO real , and in making an animated film about nature and using extremely realistic special effects , it is to be expected that the violence can be a little excessive . I'm not saying that the violence is glorified , I'm just saying that in a movie like this it is not a good idea to show some of the things that were seen in Dinosaur . I saw mothers taking their kids out of the theater during the film because of its violent content . I was bored with Dinosaur from the beginning . As soon as I found out that all of the dinosaurs were given cute little voices , I knew that I would be disappointed with the film , and I was . The " Disney effect " simply did not work with a serious Dinosaur story the way that it worked in The Land Before Time , and because they tried to combine two completely different elements like that , the film fell flat . The all powerful Disney corporation has indeed produced a flop . |
544,412 | 562,732 | 804,461 | 4 | Go with God and a bag full of guns ? | I bought Death Sentence because it looked to me like a genuine , well-made thriller and I've been a fan of Kevin Bacon ever since Tremors , which was one of my favorite films when I was a kid . Unfortunately , it very soon devolved into a boring , by-the-numbers revenge thriller , throwing away Bacon's talent . John Goodman is also a genuine talent that is genuinely wasted here . Bacon stars as Nick Hume , an unremarkable man but a good husband and father , good at his work and good with his family , until a tragedy costs the life of his oldest son , just as he was aspiring to the professional hockey world . One night at a gas station the boy is a the victim of a gang initiation , in which a young gangster kills him to gain entry into the gang . The attack is totally unprovoked , of course , unless you count a moment just earlier when the gangsters were street racing side-by-side and Nick flashes his brights at them to remind them to turn their lights on . I seem to remember seeing a movie where a killer would drive with his lights off and then kill the people that flashed their brights at him . Can't remember what it was , though . Anyway , Hume gets a sleazy , lazy lawyer to take the case against the kid who killed his son . The guy tells him that the most they can hope for is to make a deal where the kid will go to prison for a couple years , so Nick is understandably horrified . This mental giant of an attorney mentioned as one of their difficulties that the murder weapon " magically " disappeared . Maybe he's not used to taking murder cases where the killer doesn't leave the murder weapon , a complete set of fingerprints , and maybe a driver's license or credit card or at least a utility bill for some contact information . Magically . This , by the way , is where the movie first starts to go horribly wrong . When the gangster killed Hume's son , the other gangsters sped off without him , and he ran into the street cursing them , at which point a car slammed into him with enough speed to shatter both legs , to say nothing of the certain spinal injury , broken ribs , organ damage and fractured skull . He didn't get knocked over , that car PLOWED into him . Nevertheless , it doesn't occur to any lawyers later to connect the dots about the fact that Hume saw the murder with his own eyes and then saw the murderer get slammed into by a car . He still had to pick the kid out of a lineup ! ! Then later , the police occasionally come to Hume , begging him not to start a war and please stop what he's doing now ? all the while fully aware that he had murdered one of them because he was not satisfied with the conviction that he would have gotten . At one point , he asks the police for help , and he gets , " God help you . " NICE . Clearly , there's not a scrap of thought put into the script , but we can still hope for a fun ride . Sadly , we don't get that either . I was bothered to see John Goodman in such a stupid and pointless role , Bacon is clearly wasting his time , but he's such a good actor that most of the time it's as if he's struggling to squeeze himself into a movie that's too small for him . But the real problem is the gangsters . It's hard to make this kind of thriller when the antagonists are such clownish caricatures . The gang members are mostly stuntmen who are apparently trying out acting for a while , and it is clear why they don't act . After Hume kills the new kid , Joe , there is a laughable scene at a bar where they all tearfully drink to his memory , talking about how much they loved him and how he was a brother to them . It's hard to watch a lot of guys who are not actors struggling to act like hardened gangsters struggling to act emotional . Soon there's a chase scene where the gang is chasing Hume through a parking garage . He runs up one level after another , setting off car alarms all along the way . Why the car alarms , you may wonder ? I don't know , maybe he knows these aren't the smartest guys in the world and he doesn't want them to get lost . Maybe he just doesn't have a can of paint with him to paint arrows on the ground , so car alarms are the best way to make sure they can keep track of him . The end of the film devolves into stereotypical gunfights and bloodshed , with an unexpected turn at the end of Hume and the head gangster both with multiple gunshot wounds but no bullets sitting next to each other on a bench . Pretty interesting confrontation , I hadn't seen that before . It's too bad it had to come after an hour and a half of garbage ! Death Sentence is a good effort , it just doesn't work . Bacon's heart is in the right place but he isn't given anything interesting to do , Goodman's character is pointless entirely so it's a shame that he also has to dumb himself down for it , and James Wan is directing the movie for no other reason than because he directed Saw and the almost strikingly similar Dead Silence . It's too bad . It could have been so much more . |
544,394 | 562,732 | 358,294 | 4 | Average modern Seagal , but why did they mess the languages up so badly ? | So it's well known that the movie takes place in the actual neighborhood where Seagal grew up and studied martial arts , and also that he speaks fluent Japanese , but why have Japanese terrorists that are always speaking English ? Isn't it just a little off-putting that the American hero is constantly speaking Japanese but the Japanese and Chinese guys all speak broken English to each other ? Of course Seagal would want to show off his Japanese , since he almost never gets a chance to do it in his movies , but if they're going to go for that authenticity , they should at least include it where it really belongs as well ? As far as a Seagal film , it's about average as far as the films he has been releasing for the last ten years or so , none of which have really been all that impressive . But I still get a great kick out of his movies , even when they're not good . If nothing else , I can even enjoy the cheesy acting and paper-thin plots , and if even those fail at least Steve is always good for smacking around some bad guys . But in Into the Sun , other than a brief skirmish near the beginning , it's a good hour into the movie before anything happens . Before then , we get a tirelessly developing but uninteresting plot about the Chinese and Japanese versions of the Mafia and how they are developing a massive drug corporation , with Seagal entering the mix investigating the murder of a government official . Worst of all , however , is that the movie spends so much time developing the totally unnecessary and unconvincing romantic story , in which 54-year-old Steve in his floor - length leather trench-coat falls deeply and madly in love with a tiny , dainty Japanese girl who can't be more than 22 . Needless to say , my favorite part was when he sheepishly explains to her , " You know , I've never had the best luck with women . In fact , you could probably say I haven't had any luck at all ? " What's that , he's a virgin ? Is he asking her to go easy on him in the sack ? But stay tuned , at the end of the movie this impressive team of filmmakers utilize an unbelievably complex and difficult bit of cinematic trickery to make the wife disappear from Steve's grasp . I noticed this particular bit of movie magic because I did the exact same thing in a six-minute movie I made with a $250 video camera when I was taking an Intro to Film class at Fresno City College in 1998 . They really spared no expense with this movie ! The other problem is the bad guys themselves . They are such tired clichés that it's impossible from frame one to take any of them seriously , particularly the leader of the Yakuza ( the Japanese Mafia ) . He's your typical , b-movie villain ? slicked back hair , fishnet t - shirt , arm always slung over the chair he's slouched in and a lot of guys standing around him that jump to attention and do things for him when he snaps his fingers . Yawn . The guy is so unimaginative and so unimpressive that he makes the movie seem longer because I'm just waiting to see him get killed at the end . Evidently , however , they knew when they were making the movie that some serious ingredients were missing , so they tried to cover up the gaps with things like the sound effects that make it sound like whenever someone gets cut with a sword they spray out a fountain of blood all over the place . Nice . In the movie's defense , it's true that Steve does look good for his age , although he has certainly lost the hardened appeal that he had in his earliest movies like Hard to Kill and Out For Justice . At least he looks a lot better than he looked in Urban Justice , but unfortunately that's not saying a lot . The movie is a bit of a curiosity piece because Seagal wrote and performed a lot of the music on the soundtrack , and he actually sings the song during the closing credits . It's a little disturbing to listen to , but I recommend you wait and check it out because it's not disturbing because it's so bad , it's disturbing because it's actually pretty good . Too bad the rest of the movie isn't quite as pleasantly disappointing ? |
544,645 | 562,732 | 215,129 | 4 | Ahh , Tom . I expected so much more from you . . . | Road Trip is unmistakably about the greatest college tradition , but there is no reason to watch it other than to see a snake latch onto Tom Green's hand with lightning speed . His subsequent scream is by far the funniest part of the entire film . As a whole , Road Trip was a bitter disappointment . It was a desperate attempt to recreate the tremendous success of American Pie , and although it did have a few hilarious scenes , everything was too obviously thrown in to get a specific reaction . The nudity , in particular , was meaninglessly added , which leads to the questioning of the maturity of the producers as well as the director . Besides that , the majority of the jokes were also obviously calculated and artificial . I find it hard to believe that Rubin felt that the people of Earth would need him someday , and that he also seems to have an extensively detailed knowledge of historical philosophy , and yet he didn't understand that a Ford Taurus would not survive a JUMP over a RIVER ! ! Come on people , even an audience composed mainly of young people deserved to be served their laughs with a little dignity . Furthermore , many of the gross-outs were thrown in for no apparent reason . The I - can't - have - too - much - sugar - in - the - morning scene in particular offered no other explanation for the slob chef's anger toward Kyle's request for no sugar , other than the old pick-on-the-skinny-kid routine . Road Trip is meaningless drivel , it is worth nothing more than a few mindless laughs and some brief peeks at a few naked college kids . The film was thrown together with virtually no structure at all , a detriment which is weakly covered up by telling it from the wacky and sexually charged point of view of Tom Green who , in my opinion , should win this film a " Best Product Placement " award . I can just hear the writers , " Well , we have no story , so let's have that nutty popular guy from MTV tell the story , that way when the pathetically cliched plot is realized , people will just think that it's crazy ol ' Tom Green , and not a bunch of greedy and untalented Hollywood executives putting forth a desperate attempt to fatten their wallets . . . " Road Trip , despite my comments so far , was an entertaining enough film , if you like this kind of smart-ass college kid film ( a sub-genre which has unfortunately been done to death for decades ) . Just don't expect to make any use of your brain at any point while you are watching it . |
544,588 | 562,732 | 315,297 | 4 | Clunk ! | I read a pretty interesting article about Twisted in the Sacramento Bee about how the film was shot entirely in San Francisco and some of the tricks that were used . One of the more interesting things that I read was that , during the scene where they found the first body in the river with the ball game in the background ( which apparently was a real game that they included in the shot for effect ) , George Lucas showed up on the set , literally just long enough to say , ' I never shoot at night , I never shoot in fog , and I never shoot water . I'll see you later . ' Or maybe he just didn't have the heart to tell Phillip Kaufman that he doesn't involve himself with obviously bad movies . So George , what was all that Episode I nonsense ? ? I can understand what people didn't like about the film . Ashley Judd's character , around which the entire film centralizes , was heavily flawed , and I don't mean just that she is a person who spends about 60-80 % of her life either drunk or blacked out , for reasons which come up later . Jessica Shephard ( Judd ) , is a police officer who gets promoted to Homicide Detective after collaring a high-profile fugitive through what turned out to be dumb luck . Nothing TOO wrong so far , I'm sure it's not uncommon for dumb luck to be involved with solving complicated crimes , but the real problem with Judd's character is that we're asked to believe that she is a well-to-do big city detective , she's staggeringly beautiful , and yet has a heavy alcohol problem , and more importantly , a habit of going to trashy bars , meeting trashy men , and taking them home and having trashy sex with them . These men then have a habit of later turning up dead , having been beaten badly and then burned with a cigarette on one hand ( although not necessarily in that order ) , and needless to say , all the evidence points to Shephard , since she has been ' intimate ' with them , despite not knowing much about them beyond her carnal knowledge . So the first problem with the movie is about Judd's character , but an even more pressing concern comes from the set-up of the premise , which renders the movie unfortunately predictable . And I say unfortunately mainly because there is such a strong cast and crew involved . ( spoilers ) From the very beginning , you know that Shephard is not the real killer because no murder mystery in the history of time has had the killer turn out to be the person that all evidence was pointing to all along ( except for the awful 1974 horror film Scream of the Wolf ) . But an even more pressing concern involved in this plot , which expects the audience to wonder throughout the film whether Shephard really is the killer or not , is that it presents as a possibility that she regularly gets dizzy and passes out from drinking wine after a long day at work , and then , I guess , goes out and commits the brutal tortures and killings while in an alcohol-induced blackout . RIGHT . So Shephard has to know that she's not doing the killing . She IS a detective , right ? Would she not figure out that she's being drugged , or are we to believe that her alcohol problem is so extreme that she regularly drinks herself into oblivion , even after realizing that she doesn't know if she's killing people during her drunken slumbers ? Personally , I don't believe that any police detective on earth would not be able to immediately figure out if he or she was being drugged regularly , so much of the movie's dramatic tension evaporates with the credibility of Shephard's confusion . I really hate to write such a scathing review about this movie , because I am such a huge fan of so many of the people in it . Ashley Judd has been making some bad work decisions by starring in seemingly one cheesy thriller after another , but I still think she's an obviously competent actor . Unfortunately , the movie even manages to stagger and stumble all over the place despite the awesome power of actors like Samuel L . Jackson and ( admittedly less awesome ) Andy Garcia . The obvious fact that Shephard is not the killer is at least partially obscured by much ado being made about her father having been a mass murderer , killing a mass of people including her mother and himself . Her boss , police commissioner John Mills ( Jackson ) , raised her for the rest of her life and is now her boss , hence his reluctance to pull her off the case when the dead guys keep turning out to be her former one-night stands . He watched her grow up , and no god-daughter of HIS will show any weakness on the force ! Besides , they have to maintain business as usual , especially since Shephard may turn out to be pretty good bait in catching the killer . Director Phillip Kaufman proudly went to great lengths to be sure that much of the San Francisco setting made it onto the final cut , peppering the film with famous locales that can easily be found and visited . Many of them I've been to myself dozens of times , but unfortunately the hypnotic setting of San Francisco overshadows most of the rest of the film , including the big actors , mostly because the movie is so clunky and outlandish . As a general rule , psychological thrillers seem to be plagued with plot and logic discrepancies ( even the good ones , like In Dreams ) that are usually glazed over with some sort of quirky trick , like Shephard being really hot and being an alcoholic and sleeping with random men just for the fun of it ( maybe she can't find anyone to date her ? ) . Twisted tries to do that as well , but stops trying to cover its goofy tracks by the third act , where the movie just seems to be trying to end itself . Indeed , it only took the cops about a minute to find that exact dock in the dark where the final climax takes place . Twisted succumbs with desperate eagerness to the now-common attempt by movies to throw in some mind-bending twist in the final scene ( notice , for example , the film's title ) , but instead of shocking us with a twist that we may have convinced ourselves by now that we didn't see coming , it throws in the most obvious , clichéd twist imaginable . I guess not many people may have seen something that bad coming , but forehead-slapping disappointment is not generally the reaction intended in an unexpected conclusion . |
544,052 | 562,732 | 70,016 | 4 | They got the spider all wrong ? | I have studied Shakespeare , so I understand the value of literature that leaves open veritably endless possibilities for individual interpretation of the original work , so normally I wouldn't say anything about an animated version of Charlotte's Web featuring a Charlotte that doesn't look anything like the one illustrated in E . B . White's classic children's book or the one that I imagined while reading it ( which , surprise surprise , was remarkably like the one illustrated in the book ) . The reason that I point this out here is because I have also studied Charlotte's Web at the University level , and have learned that E . B . White went through several illustrators before finally finding one that got the spider to look the way he wanted her to look . And yes , by the way , there are classes at the University level in which Charlotte's Web is required reading , as is Alice In Wonderland , Through The Looking Glass , Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone ( or Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone , if you're not a stupid American like me ) , Captain Underpants , etc . A small amount of research into the history of Charlotte's Web would surely have revealed White's specific requirement that Charlotte look like a real spider , not a cute Disney spider with a bowl cut , a nice smile , and big blue eyes . Adorable , but her appearance here rather defeats the purpose . There are other discrepancies in the movie that take unnecessary artistic liberties from the book , and while some of them I can understand being changed ( such as the fact that Avery , Fern's brother , is introduced skipping happily down the stairs with a big smile rather than as heavily armed as he is when he's introduced in the book ) , other changes had a serious affect on the story as a whole . Wilbur's maturation , like Fern's , is in fast forward and altered all along the way . As soon as he gets to the farm , he misses Fern so much that he won't eat as soon as he's moved to the farm , because he knows that he's been sold and taken away from Fern . In the book he eats so greedily that he buries his head far enough into his food to get it into his ears , and the narrative presents his thoughts , so we know that Wilbur is at least an intelligent creature , even though he doesn't speak out loud at first . The thing that is lost in the movie version is that , since we can't hear his thoughts , the scene where he learns to speak comes off as contrived and ridiculous . The goose tells him that he has to TRY to speak , so he barely manages to snort out his name , and 15 seconds later he's singing ( with a startling vocabulary ) a song all about how amazing it is that he can talk . Not only can he talk , but he can dance and sing showtunes , too ! The lengthy and complicated words that are thrown in for the benefit of Wilbur's song also take away from the effect of the story as a whole , because despite spouting these huge words and even rhyming them together , he later has no idea what Charlotte is talking about when she says ' Salutations ' ( or , later , ' versatile ' ) , a greeting that is meant to signify her intelligence in the book because no words like it had been used up to that point in the story ( not quite so in the movie , is it ? ) . This problem is compacted by the fact that Charlotte can rattle off two definitions for ' Humble ' but can't think of a single word to describe Wilbur without having Templeton find a piece of paper with writing on it . Another thing that really bothered me was the way the relationship between Fern and Henry Fussy ultimately played out . This was one of the questionable things in the original novel , and not only is this romantic relationship between these two 8-year-olds not subdued in the movie version , it is enhanced . Henry shows up at the fair near the end of the movie ( looking startlingly different from the last time that he is shown ) , and Fern winks at him , he tells her that he has some money and wants to take her on the Ferris-wheel , and they leave hand in hand , talking like 16-year-olds rather than the 8-year-olds that they are . Wilbur then cries to Charlotte that Fern didn't even say goodbye to him when she left , and Charlotte reassures him by telling him that Fern will always love him , but that ' She's growing up . She's suddenly seeing Henry Fussy with new eyes . ' Suddenly is right ! There are a few very important lines from the original story that are placed directly into the movie , such as Fern complaining about the injustice of Wilbur being killed for being small at the beginning , and the very last line of the movie , about Charlotte being both a good friend and a good writer , but this only begins to make up for the things that were added or changed in the movie . The usual musical numbers that are found in every animated Disney movie regardless of content are here , and they aren't ALL completely cutesy and contrived ( although Wilbur's ' I Can Talk ' song is unforgivable ) , but they are definitely typical Disney fodder . The structure of the story is here , but there are some very important things that are changed for the benefit of being a Disney movie . This is , after all , a DISNEY adaptation of a children's literary classic . No less , and , most importantly , no more . |
544,547 | 562,732 | 80,749 | 4 | Weak follow-up ? | As an aspiring filmmaker , I think I gradually develop more and more of a fear of my first film being a huge hit , because it places so much attention on you immediately and creates this enormous requirement for a second film of equal magnitude . Just after Halloween , John Carpenter returns with The Fog , a weak horror film that tries vainly to recreate the subtle , relentless horror of Halloween , but instead comes off as little more than a campy ghost story . The premise is interesting enough , a ship at sea becomes lost in a thick fog and , seeing a light in the fog that appears to be from a fire , heads in that direction and ends up striking a reef and sinking , killing everyone on board . I've heard people describe them as pirates , for some reason , and there was some mention in the film of them being lepers , but their identity is really irrelevant . The point is that they were killed by a light that lured them to their watery deaths , and every hundred years , I guess , they are able to come back between midnight and 1am , the time of their shipwreck , to seek revenge against the people who caused their deaths . Kind of reminds me of that idiot film Jeepers Creepers and its equally idiotic sequel , both of which feature a monster that comes back every 23 years for 23 days to kill . The only difference is that the victims of the shipwreck have a REASON to come back and kill . So anyway , I'm pretty sure I have the basics of the plot right , but unfortunately , after the campside ghost story at the beginning of the film , the movie itself is really a series of cheap scares and ineffective cinematography , to say nothing of the fact that the movie begins with that fireside scene , a gigantic cliché in itself . The animation of the fog into the film was one of the big special effects , and acknowledging that the film was made more than 20 years ago , I have to say it was less than impressive . It is endowed with the rather campy quality that it literally glows , and has all sorts of capabilities , like jamming turbine engines and other physically destructive forces . I tried to convince my roommate that it was a good movie even though it's title implied some evil , murderous fog , because it wasn't the fog that was able to kill , but the ghosts that came back to life within it . Unfortunately , the fog does take on some powers of its own . But again , this is a horror film , and one of the first 80s horror films ever made , so there are certain things that must be excused . It did help to usher in a whole sub-genre of horror films , but not really one that wasn't already introduced by its predecessor , Halloween , one of the greatest horror films ever made . ( spoilers ) There were a few individual scenes that really bothered me . A nighttime radio host , curiously named Stevie Wayne ( played by Adrienne Barbeau ) is one of the first to see the fog rolling in , with the help of the weatherman , who calls her regularly to give her reports about the weather . There's a scene late in the film where she watches helplessly as the fog engulfs her own home , where her young son is home alone . After the baffling decision of doing nothing more than yell into the radio at him , hoping that he's listening , to watch out for the fog , she later apologizes to him for not coming to help , assuming that he has fallen victim to the killer fog and there's nothing to do about it but say sorry . The reason this scene bothered me is because it is so contrived and pointless . Any thinking person ( even if able to think of any other person when their own son's life was in danger ) , would simply scream into the microphone that there's a deadly fog rolling and so get the hell out of town , and then take off to help her son . She had a full-on radio station in that lighthouse , she might have even been able to record that and then loop it over and over for the benefit of people who are flipping through the station looking for some news about what in the world is going on with this freaky weather . But instead , she chooses to remain in the radio station , apologizing to her son for letting him die so that she can stay in the radio station and give any listeners a play-by-play of where exactly the fog is and when , like there's someone who's going to stay in town , listening to the radio so they know what parts of town to stay away from . Personally , I'd be getting on the highway away from the coast , regardless of what any radio show was saying . But hey , that's just me . My favorite thing about the film is that there are so many elements distinctive of John Carpenter's work , although that also served to constantly remind me that the movie was always in the shadow of Halloween , trying unsuccessfully to recreate the successful brand of horror seen in that movie . That being said , then , I would say that The Fog is certainly not a horror classic in any sense , but definitely a curiosity piece in regards to the work of John Carpenter . |
543,906 | 562,732 | 93,935 | 4 | Follows the book with meticulous detail at some points and departs wildly from it at others . | The 1987 TV version of The Secret Garden is one that follows the book and includes several things that were left out of the later 1993 version , but there are some things that are not done correctly or that are not even remotely suggested in the book and have no place at all in the movie . There is an unnecessary inclusion of Mary as an older woman , reminiscing about her times in the secret garden at Misselthwaite Manor , which changes the entire film from an adventure tale of a young girl in a strange atmosphere to one of a flashback of a girl who grew into exactly the kind of person that the movie is trying to convince kids not to grow into . On one hand , I understand that this emphasizes the idea ( very popular in children's literature ) that at no point in any adult's life should they ever let go of their childhood completely , but it also presents the older Mary's life as missing something that was there in her childhood . Late in the film , as one of the awful artistic liberties taken with this version of the book , we learn with enormous dismay what that thing is . There is a much more graphic depiction of the cholera scenario that killed her parents than there was in the 1993 version , which director Alan Grint uses both to emphasize the extent of how spoiled Mary is ( ' Said is dead and there's no one to dress me or make me breakfast ! ' ) as well as to take another completely unnecessary creative liberty with the story , this time throwing in a scene where it seems that Mary has also been infected with cholera . After complaining that there's no one to dress and feed her , she wanders out to the dinner table , still covered with the leftovers from last night's feast , and she starts nibbling here and there and taking sips from all of the half empty wine glasses . We learn for the rest of the film that Mary is too stuck up to accept anything but the best of everything , yet in this scene she is suddenly willing to scrounge around like a lowly scavenger animal . After helping herself to the leftovers , Mary gets a little drunk and staggers to her bed , where she collapses , dripping sweat , and we are treated to some of the enormously creepy music that accompanies much of the film . The supernatural element of the story is enhanced as much as possible in this movie , which increases the effect that the 1993 version also had , which was to reduce the inherent Magic of the garden and render it little more than an escape from the sheer creepiness of the Manor . The Manor itself was enormous and looming from the outside , just like in the novel , but then we see that the halls on the inside are no more impressive than a hotel . These are relatively small and forgivable discrepancies , however ( or at least they become small and forgivable compared to the jaw-droppingly awful ending ) , and most of the rest of the film is in the right place . Gennie James gives a satisfactory performance as Mary ( who is MEANT to be a dislikable character ) . Barret Oliver and Jadrien Steele , however , are miscast in their roles as Dickon and Colin , respectively , if only because they are meant to be the same age as Mary , but they are played by actors who are about 12 and 13 years old , while Gennie James was only about 9 or 10 when the movie was made . The age difference shows very clearly in the film . The character of Dickon , as with the rest of the movie , is written with a greatly enhanced mystical side , playing him up as a supernatural character rather than a boy who has spent so much time outdoors with nature that he has developed an unusual closeness to it . He is transferred from being a fun - and nature-loving boy in the novel to a mystical witch doctor who can foresee the future , make statements about fate , and carry squirrels around in his pocket not like they're his friends and pets , like in the book , but like they are his own offspring , unable to survive without him . When Mary tells him that she found the key to the secret garden , Dickon says , ' You found the door , ' and then looks away dreamily and continues , ' it was meant to be ? ' Oh , PLEASE . Archibald Craven is again a wonderful character , as he was in the 1993 version , although Derek Jacobi is not able to capture the same depth of mysterious sadness and closed off suffering that John Lynch was able to , and again here , neither Lord Craven nor Colin is ever once presented as having even the slightest bit of a hunchback . Why is this left out of these film versions ? When we first meet Lord Craven in this film ( in a scene in the library that is so creepy that it almost cancels out the effect of the meeting entirely ) , he is very much hunched over , but he becomes perfectly straight by the next time he is seen . The worst discrepancy from the book , however ( besides the ending , but I'll get to that later ) , is the scene where Mary is finally fed up with Colin's screaming and crying and storms into his room to shut him up once and for all . It starts out okay , with Mary screaming at him that she thinks everyone should just let him scream himself to death , but when he says that he screams because he is going to grow up to be a hunchback like his father , Mary asks if she might be allowed to see the lump on his back , using a level of politeness that her character would not even be able to fathom . She does this again in the scene where she asks Lord Craven if she might be allowed a small piece of land , coming off as a terrified child more than one with ulterior motives , as in the novel . One of the weak points of the novel is that the moral is handed directly to the reader at the beginning of Chapter 17 , and this is left out in both this and the 1993 versions , thankfully , but this one turns around and adds in an equally ham-handed moral . It starts off with Ben Weatherstaff's entrance into the garden , which is not done under Colin's strict orders as in the novel , and then Colin weakly stands for a second for Ben , rather than forcing himself to stand the entire time he's there , not wishing to give in in front of him . Shortly after this scene , Mary explains to Colin , ' Ugly thoughts are like thistles , pretty thoughts are like roses . I used to have so many ugly thoughts in my head that I had no room for pretty ones . ' Very cute , but did we really need to have it fed to us like that ? I was glad to see here a lot of things from the novel that were left out of the 1993 version , such as Bob Haworth's exercises that Dickon teaches to Colin to strengthen his legs , Colin's goal to become a scientist and lecturer and experimenter , and something of Dickon's family , even though all we see is his mother and not his massive amount of siblings , but it's just too bad that the movie feels that there is so much that needs to be added to the story . There is no romance in Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden ( although there are small hints at childish versions of it ) , yet in this film adaptation they evidently were so desperate to add some cheesy romance in that they completely changed the story . Dickon joined the war and was killed , and Mary returns to the secret garden to embrace her wonderful memories of it ( she is also still wearing her nurse's uniform , showing that she was so determined to serve in the war that she doesn't take off her uniform even when she's off duty ) , and Colin shows up , still so weak in the legs that he has to walk with a cane . First we are forced to wonder how Colin managed to get into the military when he can barely stand on his own feet without help , and then we have to see Mary tell him that she never answered his letters , in which he repeatedly asks her to marry her , because she wanted it to happen in their garden . Again , very cute , but fans of the novel , if they haven't already , will be slapping their foreheads in disbelief that writer Blanche Hanalis felt the ridiculous need to add something like this into a movie based on a book that is already more than able to stand on its own , as are all of its characters by the end of the story . There is no need for extraneous things like Dickon's death and the marriage of Colin and Mary because , as this movie shows , such additions into the story can only cause problems and make it trip over itself . |
544,691 | 562,732 | 78,723 | 4 | What form of lunatic is that ? | In an early attempt at a war film , Steven Spielberg , as I remember one critic describing it , has laid his first multi-million dollar egg . Which is odd because short war films are some of the first kinds of films that he started making when he was a kid . Maybe it was just a mistake to make it a comedy , because it comes off as this weird mishmash of a war film that crashed into a slapstick comedy and came out bouncing along on three wheels . Sadly , the most fascinating thing about the movie to me is that it stars Slim Pickens and Toshiro Mifune , two giants in film history , and is directed by Steven Spielberg , one of the greatest directors ever , and is still this bad . I can accept that Spielberg wanted to do something like this for fun and I lose no respect at all for him for making this movie , but there are parts that are so astoundingly bad that it makes me wonder what the original intentions of the film were . It's clear that it was meant to be a spoof not only of old WWII films but also of the hysteria that followed the Pearl Harbor attacks which was generated by a fear that the Japanese were going to strike the mainland . This was not an unreasonable concern at the time , I should think , maybe someday will make a movie about the ridiculous fear that al Qaeda is going to hit America again , although who knows how long it will be until we know whether or not that's an unjustified concern . I don't think it is . I suppose in retrospect such a worry can be poked fun at , but are we to believe that the Japanese didn't know where Hollywood is located ? That they had to send an elite team on land to dress up like Christmas trees to find it ? I imagine this was meant to lead into one of the best scenes in the movie , where the Japanese shoot LAND off of the HOLLYWOODLAND sign , a hilarious addition to the movie , since the sign really did say HOLLYWOODLAND originally . Dan Aykroyd's " I am a bug " scene is good , and the movie opens with a clever spoof on Jaws , and there certainly are some great lines in the movie ( " This is the craziest son of a bitch I ever saw . How many more do you think are up there ? " ) , but like so many other movies the diamonds are not able to shine very brightly through the rough . On the DVD , it's interesting to see Spielberg talking about the movie , because he expresses some disappointment that it was not as appreciated in America as he had hoped it would be , although they love it in Europe . I wonder what the meaning of that might be ? |
544,276 | 562,732 | 245,686 | 4 | Poor Kid Rock . | A movie like The Adventures of Joe Dirt is not the kind of movie that is going to trick you into thinking that it is something worth watching , the way movies like Armageddon try to . David Spade is almost universally associated with low thought comedies , but like Joe Dirt , these are not always all bad . Joe Dirt is the type of movie that comes across as a goofball comedy that is not likely to be very believable and certainly will not promote much cognitive activity , but I respect it because there is a place in the entertainment industry for movies like Joe Dirt . There is a place for bad comedy in the movies , and the reason that I don't hold Joe Dirt's status as a bad comedy against it is because it doesn't try to be anything else . There are so many movies these days that could so easily have slipped comfortably in with this country's truly great films had it not been for the addition of stupid , stupid love stories or idiot comic relief ( a glaring recent example being Pearl Harbor ) that it's refreshing to see one come along every once in a while that knows where it stands . That being said , I would like to also point out that I certainly have little to no respect for Joe Dirt outside of knowing its place . It is a comedy full of bad jokes that either are looking for a cheap laugh or , in a disturbing amount of occasions , are making jokes about things that really shouldn't be joked about . The movie is about a guy named Joe Dirt who is proudly the most redneck person you could ever hope to meet , whose parents abandoned him at the Grand Canyon when he was 8 years old . It is not that easy in this country for an 8 year old to get through life on his own , but mostly because it would not be too long before he was picked off the streets by a shelter or the police or any number of institutions . I doubt that he lived in the woods until he was old enough to pretend he had enough of an address to get a job , although that would certainly account for many things about his appearance and demeanor . After being noticed by a radio show that badly needed some sucker to laugh at for a few hours , Joe gets a spot on the radio show talking about his life , which at first starts out as a hilarious joke for the DJ ( Dennis Miller ) , but ends up capturing the heart of the DJ and the audience and earning Joe several more days of air time to tell his story . He talks of when he went out in search of his real parents , leaving us already aware that he didn't find them or didn't care to know them once he had met them ( given the fact that he still seemed pretty parentless ) , at first accurately portraying what a pathetic person he is , but ultimately his struggle becomes apparent and he starts to come across as some weird sort of tragic hero . Well , a goofy comedy's version of a tragic hero , anyway . As has been one of Spade's most prevalent skills throughout his career , in Joe Dirt he capitalizes on his weaknesses , making us laugh at how pathetic Joe Dirt is and , at the same time , how easily Spade can portray this kind of person . Kid Rock has a bit part as anther redneck who is trying to steal away from Dirt a stunningly attractive blonde who has probably the most inexplicable attraction to any person in any film in the last 20 or 30 years . This might be considered the point in the film where it switches from the realm of mil romantic comedy and goes full force into the world of science fiction , fantasy , and horror . Kid Rock plays a character that he is familiar with in real life , a tire-squealing redneck with little to no education and the total conviction that he is the coolest thing on earth . Unfortunately , by playing this character , he emphasizes the already prevalent detail that his taking a role in this film is an obvious attempt to switch over to acting and away from his flailing musical career . Overall , Joe Dirt has it positive moments . There were parts of the movie that were genuinely amusing ( although not very many at all ) , but unfortunately there were also an enormous amount of parts that were supposed to be funny but were not even by the furthest stretch of the imagination ( such as anything involving septic tanks shaped like missiles and buried mysteriously in the desert or anything about Joe's exposed brain ) . Someone thought , for example , that it would be amusing to have Joe Dirt say that he was born without the top of his skull , with his brain exposed , which completely mystifies me . This is a completely backwards step in developing the character of Joe Dirt ( who they are trying to present as a normal guy underneath his astonishingly dorky exterior ) , and more importantly , it's not at all amusing , it's a horrible way to try to generate gross out humor . Maybe the writers forgot that people in real life are born like that . Maybe Joe , unlike the writers , sacrificed the top of his skull at birth for some sort of care for his fellow human being , and on top of that ( no pun intended , of course ) , they throw in a hideous mullet wig that Joe has miraculously worn all his life . So let's recap , Joe Dirt was born without the top of his skull , he was fitted with the most repulsive wig that must have fallen out of the 1970s , he was abandoned by his parents at the age of eight , and now spends his life mopping floors and being laughed at by anyone he comes into contact with ( including us ) . When you consider the human side of the movie , the comedy drains away , which is ironic since the human side is exactly the part of Joe Dirt that the movie tries to bring to light . Joe eventually finds his parents , only to discover from them within a matter of minutes and while surrounded by TV cameras that okay , okay , they left him at the Grand Canyon on purpose , leaving us with the feeling that the last hour and a half was a complete waste and the feeling that , had the writers not so obviously been complete morons , Joe Dirt really had the chance to have been a worthwhile comedy . A slim chance , but a chance nonetheless . |
544,815 | 562,732 | 100,502 | 4 | Yet another sophomore effort that falls flat on it face . | Robocop 2 starts off with planet Detroit in the worst shape ever . The entire police force is on strike , which seems like an entirely too convenient start for a Robocop film , but then we see that there is actually a believable reason for them all to be on strike . Planet Detroit is so deeply in debt to the evil empire Omni Consumer Products that they are unable to pay the police , who go on strike until the debts can be paid . Unfortunately , this plot is largely ignored in favor of a rivalry which develops between Robocop and Cain , an insane gangster who plans to force the city to legalize the ridiculously addictive drug Nuke so that he can flood the city with it to the point where everyone becomes hopelessly addicted to it and he becomes so rich and powerful that he can pay the city's debt and become its king . This is , unfortunately , the only way that the subplot of Cain and his plans is attached to the far more interesting financial plight of the city , which has become copless but at least has an interesting problem to solve . Instead , the movie focuses on this criminal underworld with Robocop as the only cop who is willing or able to get in and do something about it . The movie wins hands down the Worst Taste of the Year award by throwing in a vicious twelve-year-old who is put into the movie for no other reason than so he can spout a lot of profanity and give us a real test to see how much we can really take before we give up and walk out of the theater . Obviously it would take a lot more than a financial debt for a city like Detroit to be denied its police force so that criminals were able to run rampant in the streets , not hindered by any laws whatsoever , but keep in mind that the Detroit in the Robocop films is not attached to the rest of the United States . It is , in fact , an entirely separate planet , which becomes increasingly obvious as the sequels get poured on . Peter Weller has thankfully returned to once again take on the uncomfortable role of Robocop , who still has the same overall look but now for some reason sports a shiny new blue paintjob , which does nothing but make him look plastic . There is a brief point in the film where the human emotions that always remained in Murphy after he was made into Robocop come up , as he drives by his house lovingly spying on his wife ( who , through Murphy's flashbacks , is thought to be dead through much of the original film ) , to the point where she actually takes out a restraining order and Robocop has to be reprimanded and has to recite back to his programmers that he is not a human , he is a machine . Not a lot of thought put into this scene , by the way . You would think that , given all of the goofy comedy that is put into this movie , a more witty writer would have had Robocop say , ' I am not human . I am a machine . I did , after all , build and program myself , so I should really know better . ' After this brilliant scene , Robocop is completely reprogrammed ( maybe they thought he was getting smart with them and decided that they better punish him ) , so they implant every bit of goofy polite mannerism into him to make him easier to relate to the human public , and the movie immediately turns from being a bad action film to being an even worse comedy . Robocop walks around saying Hello how are you and beautiful morning isn't it , it would be a shame to waste it , and goes out trying to be polite to people on the street , only to have even children playing in the street immediately lose all respect for him to the point where they spray paint ' KIK ME ' on his back in bright orange paint . At least they were nice enough to use disappearing paint , which is visible immediately after they paint him and then never again for the rest of the film . ( spoilers ) In the original film , Robocop had a wonderful and worthy adversary , ED209 , who is now replaced by another robot who is created out of the body of Cain , the super-villain from the earlier portion of the movie . Yeah , the drug lord that wanted to flood the city with Nuke and take it over is being granted another chance at life as well as an astronomical amount of firepower , no doubt the same line of deductive logic that led the diminished police force to weigh down the ' Splatterpunks ' with weapons in part 3 . You can tell a lot of thought went into THAT . So we are presented with an evil-looking robot who is supposedly supposed to take over after Robocop , who has committed the crime of still loving his ex-wife . The fact that this robot is presented as a solution to ANY problem pretty clearly illustrates the kind of thinking that has led Detroit down the pit that it lies in , and it doesn't look like things are going to get better with stuff like this going on . Indeed , all they'll have is more and more problems but I suppose that they figure they can at least make more sequels and maybe make some money that way . For the most part , Robocop 2 is a complete failure , not really accomplishing anything other than finding a job for a guy who's specialty is playing the violin with his legs behind his head ( If you can play the violin like THIS guy , you might be a redneck ! ) . It takes the Robocop story and stupidly tries to take it in a completely new direction ( a direction which turns out to be flat out wrong ) rather than build upon the genius of the original . I try as much as I can to avoid clichés in my reviews , but this is a perfect example of a time when you would enjoy your self more if you just watched the original again . |
544,305 | 562,732 | 307,466 | 4 | Your average revenge story ? | Sin takes an average revenge story , adds in rape and pornographers , and ultimately turns into an average revenge story . At the very least , the plot thickens near the end of the movie when we realize that the bad guy ( who is a really bad guy and the movie absolutely will leave no questions about that ) turns out to have a reason for his actions throughout the movie beyond just being a really bad guy . It is odd , however , that a movie can take such talented actors as Ving Rhames and , especially , Gary Oldman and turn their performances into run-of-the-mill action clichés . Rhames utters the phrase ' she's my sister ' so many times in the movie that by the end the movie has turned the phrase into a cliché all by itself . You messin ' with my family you messin ' with me , and so forth . I think that most of the reason that so many people hated this movie was because it raises your expectations because of the people involved but did nothing new within its genre . It's a standard revenge movie with standard plot points and turns and even the standard plot thickening in the third act . Where the movie does not wallow in clichés , however , is in some of the characterizations . No one is as good or bad as they initially seem to be in this movie . The evil was heaped onto Charlie Strom , Gary Oldman's character , so heavily in the first half of the movie that it's difficult for him to escape from underneath the mountain of badness that he is under even when we see the reasons for his actions , but the good guys in particular , are not as good as they seem . Eddie Burns ( Ving Rhames ) lost the use of his left arm in the line of duty , but also played a role in the death of an innocent man that could really amount to murder . Bella , played by Alicia Coppola , is someone that we want to root for but may hesitate because of the , ah , sinful nature of her occupation . There is , however , a lot of forgiveness in the movie , and I respect that . At one point , Eddie discusses some of the finer points in life with Strom over cups of coffee , despite their mutual desires to kill one another . Later in the movie , Eddie is attempting to save Strom from a pool of quicksand in the middle of the Nevada desert . I didn't know there was quicksand in the middle of the Nevada desert , but no matter . The movie's not about where there is quicksand or how fast you can get from large freeways in the middle of Las Vegas to open desert without even any discernible roads , the movie's about you messin ' with my family you messin ' with me . And who better than Ving Rhames to return the messy favor ? Rhames could take these people out with an arm tied behind his back . |
543,774 | 562,732 | 107,009 | 4 | A movie about the sinister possibilities of the young internet . | Ghost In The Machine is one of those movies that comes out with the emergence of some new technology and how it can go wrong . Computers were still in the major developing stages in the early 1990s ( at least compared to today's standards ) , as was the Internet , and Ghost In The Machine seems to be a false start on getting a handle on turning the new technology into a horror movie or suspense thriller . The problem is that the writers of the movie were apparently so anxious to get the film written and filmed and released that they didn't take the time to put any thought into it . The technical production of the film is not entirely a pathetic mess , even though it does assume that electronics come equipped with little windows through which can be seen the shining faces of people at their computers , and that electrical outlets with tape over them will display a blinking red ACCESS DENIED sign if you attempt to get through them , but even the most cartoonish computer animated scenes that took us on a roller coaster ride through our microwave ovens were at least mildly interesting , although not at all convincing . In this case , we are looking more at the technique than the content , the way you watch an abstract relaxation video . The problem here is that the movie tells the story of how a serial killer steals peoples address books and then kills the people listed in them , but a reason for these killings is never even suggested . The closest we come to having a reason for why this guy is so eager to commit all of these brutal killings is during an early scene when he is driving home from his job at the computer shop , and in recklessly trying to pass a slow moving truck he swerves into oncoming traffic only to jerk the wheel to the left and go skidding down a steep hill upside down in his car , laughing all the way , HA HA HA ! So the guy is completely insane . That's a reason , I guess , but probably the most uncreative one imaginable and therefore one of the least interesting ones possible . The whole idea of the killer going into electricity in general is obviously the most unrealistic thing in the entire film , but it is stretched to cover almost the entire movie from beginning to end , which is what shows most clearly the fact that the movie is based on the emergence of the world wide web . It's kind of a what-if thriller about what would happen if a psychotic killer was accidentally released into the electricity based communications system that is the internet and was then able to defy all laws of logic and physics and who knows what else , and if he had somehow developed this overwhelming passion to kill a certain woman and her family and friends for committing the crime of leaving her address book at the computer shop . The movie makes a good solid effort to be a worthwhile thriller , but for the most part it falls completely flat . |
543,937 | 562,732 | 397,065 | 4 | Pinch this tiny heart of mine , wrap it in up soiled twine , you never read what you've written ? | As has become the standard for modern horror films , this sub-par House of Wax remake ( as I call it having yet to see the original ) begins with an introduction of a meaningless group of stupid college-age kids , and then promptly allows us to get to know them just enough to ensure that they are all thoroughly unlikable . I'm not sure why so much effort was put into making them all into such distasteful characters , but my current theory is that it is simply a misguided attempt to keep some element of mystery in the movie , since you already know they'll be killed off one by one . In the movie's defense , a good story involves good character change , and it cannot be denied that there is plenty of that here , it's just too bad that's not all there is . I'm reminded of the ridiculous horror film Wrong Turn , which featured an equally meaningless group of college-age kids getting lost in the woods and being confronted by some clownishly made-up in-bred rednecks who gleefully off all of the unfortunate kids stuck in the big bad woods . That and Texas Chainsaw III , but I digress . As I am led to believe was also the case , to a certain extent , at least , in the original film , the remake concerns a deserted town in which there can be found a wax museum whose feature displays are so realistic because there are real people beneath the wax coating , presumably embalmed in the wax yet slowly rotting away . The biggest advance that this film makes is in some truly revolting scenes , such as a scene where one of the kids is made into a wax sculpture and his friend tries to free him , only peeling the skin off his face as he tries to get the wax off of him . On the other hand , there are also some thoroughly botched scenes , like the one where a girl gets the tip of her finger cut off and it bubbles over with blood like a fountain . Tom Savini , who was doing better gore effects than this two and a half decades ago , would be appalled . Remember in House of the Dead when those kids went to that island for the rave of the century , found it completely deserted , and didn't really seem to be bothered ? It's kind of the same here , they take a detour on their way to a big football game get lost on a detour and decide to camp in the scary , smelly , creepy woods . They smell the smell of decaying flesh , and a pickup truck pulls up and shines its brights at them , no one getting out or responding when they call to them . Nick , the biggest jerk of the lot already , hauls off and throws a bottle at the truck , smashing one of the headlights . Let me tell you something , you do not get away with that in the country . The driver doesn't even have to be a crazed killer to jump out and knock your block off . Instead , the truck ominously drives away , leaving the kids convinced that the situation is under control , so they settle down for the night . After later running into the guy in the pickup truck as he dumps dead animals onto a massive pile of rotting dead animals ( hence the smell of the woods ) , they smartly decide to hitch a ride with him to town to buy a fanbelt to replace the one that snapped in their truck while it was parked the night before . The town they get a ride to turns out to be a forgotten relic of the 1960s , which " doesn't even show up on the GPS but is remarkably maintained . No one's walking around the town but there are plenty of people at the funeral home , including one man , incredulous that they would interrupt his grandmother's funeral but who soon recovers and agrees to offer them what turns out to be a lot of waxy help . After this point , the movie runs parallel to countless other movies college kids get lost in the woods , one gets kidnapped , and the rest get killed one by one . At the moment I'm thinking of Texas Chainsaw 4 , by far the worst of them all , including the ludicrous 2003 remake . You'll yawn through the rest of the film , if you haven't yawned through it so far , although there are some impressive special effects with the wax , some I've mentioned already , including an obviously CG but still interesting climax , which describes the fate of the House of Wax . Essentially , it's just another bad slasher movie from the 1980s , but with Paris Hilton and , the one thing that has caused horror films to lose their souls , computer generated special effects . This is certainly not the worst modern horror movie you could watch , I'm mentioned in this review some that are at least as bad and some far worse ( like House of the Dead ) , it's just so tiring to see yet another one come out with so little thought or effort put into it . |
544,627 | 562,732 | 351,382 | 4 | I'm glad it wasn't called Mt . Tails ? | It is very possible that I simply didn't give the movie a fair enough chance because it was so immediately unappealing to me ( something similar happened with Triplets of Belleville ) , but I really should have caught on when I put the film on and my roommate , an exchange student from Japan , immediately started laughing at the movie , saying that it sounded dumb . Now , I don't agree that it is dumb , the animation is very simple but clearly very skilled . It's like classic animation with added layers that add another element of realism to them while remaining strictly in the realm of the surreal at the same time . But the subject matter is entirely unappealing to me . It has an interesting message about stinginess and greed , but it is wrapped in such an unpleasant package that it is almost not worth learning , especially because you already knew it anyway . The sound effects while the man is loudly gobbling cherries and cherry pits , for example , are indeed repulsive . There was a clever scene of animation as we kept diving endlessly into the hole that the man finds in his head when he pulls the sapling out of his scalp , but it goes on for so long that it seems to overshadow everything else . There is so much stock put into that one sequence that it is almost like the whole movie is about it . As I said about Triplets of Belleville , this would have been a great thing for a late night TV program like adult swim , or its Japanese counterpart , but an Academy Award nominated film ? It gives me the impression that there is not generally a long list of animated short films for the Academy to choose from . |
544,912 | 562,732 | 100,403 | 4 | Nothing can be scary with such goofy looking feet . | What a snoozefest . In this disastrous sequel to the vastly superior Predator , we are left to wonder whether someone actually , in good conscience , thought it would be a clever idea to move the Predator into downtown LA , or whether it just took place closer to the movie studio because no one in their right mind would bankroll a film like this , so they couldn't afford any location shoots . My money's on the latter . And another thing , Predator 2 is set in the distant future ( far off 1997 ! ! ) , why would they do something like that ? The movie came out in 1990 and then there was only seven years before we saw that downtown LA ( specifically the criminals ) do not look anything like they are portrayed in the movie . Look at Back to the Future II , for example . It was made almost 20 years ago , and there is still more than a decade before we will all see how wrong they were in predicting what the future would look like . At least the rest of the movie was good . The streets of LA look a lot like they did in the Robocop movies , and the criminals look like they did in Robocop 3 , by leaps and bounds the worst of the series . We get all these criminals who are dressed up like circus clowns , and the movie even throws in some crime kingpins that look like caricatures of witch doctors and whatnot . Like they were flown in straight from the mountains of Nepal and asked to say a few lines for the camera . Is this supposed to create the sense of isolation and unfamiliarity that the first movie created so well ? Please . Danny Glover takes on the role of Lieutenant Mike Harrigan , basically the leader on the search for the killer who keeps leaving bodies stripped naked , often with things like heads and spinal cords pulled out ( not cut , but pulled ) and hanging upside down , until the FBI , I think , shows up to take over the investigation . The endlessly watch-able Gary Busey steals the spotlight in every single one of his scenes , but mostly because Glover , also a massively talented actor , for some reason gives a halting and simply bad delivery of his horribly written lines . Busey's character is also pretty badly written , but he has such a recognizable presence that you almost don't notice . Ironically enough , it works to Busey's and the movie's advantage that he simply plays the same character that he almost always plays in his movies ? himself . The script is so full of clichés and unrealistic conversation that it sounds like it was written in an afternoon , if that . Had the writers read these lines out loud to themselves while writing it , I assure you they would have realized how ludicrous it sounded . The movie starts with a ludicrous shootout scene between the cops and entire herds of criminals , as the two gangs , you might say , fight for control of the streets . In the pessimistic future view of the movie , much like the Robocop films , crime is out of control , and as you see here , the police are out-manned and outgunned by the drug gangs on the streets . The Predator watches over this whole shootout , always out of sight , no doubt wondering why these creatures are so intent on killing off their own kind . Here's another interesting irony of the movie , the Predator , as is to be expected , comes with all kinds of new weapons , a remodeled mask , and lots of cool gadgetry , some of it meant for self-applied medical treatment , and yet some of the things that are brought over from the original film are just botched . We learn in this movie that the Predator doesn't make himself invisible , but is somehow able to bend light . That's even more impressive than invisibility ! It almost gives you the perception that the Predator carries at least some of the power of something like a black hole , but the shimmer effect is just badly done here . I would have thought that a newer movie would have been able to improve upon the one from a few years earlier . Bill Paxton , 4 years after his performance as the over-the-top and entirely too cocky Private Hudson from Aliens , turns in a performance in this movie as exactly the same guy . Overly confident despite being in completely over his head . His role here , as he explains in his interview on the DVD , is to act entirely too sure of himself , like Billy the Kid , until he realizes what he's up against , at which point he turns into the whining baby that he was in Aliens . The only thing that the movie successfully brings over from the previous film is brought over as an excuse to allow a lot more guys to get killed and to make an excuse for the weakness of this movie's plot . The original team killed off by the Predator in South America was a top secret elite team of special forces , as Peter Keyes ( Busey ) explains to the clueless Harrigan ( Glover ) , which is why the police forces involved have no idea what's going on . This allows for plenty of deaths before the FBI can convince the insubordinate police force ( Harrigan , as it were ) to believe them that the drug gangs are not involved here , and that they really do need to back off . Seriously , guys . Let us handle this . It's top secret . Harrigan , come on , back off . You don't know what you're dealing with . You don't have the resources or the knowledge to fight this enemy . I know that your friend was killed , but you just have to let us handle this . We know how to get this guy . Come on , Harrigan . I can't tell you what it really is , just let us handle it . OK fine , you see , there was this elite team in South America ? The best scene is the hunt scene about three quarters of the way through movie , and it's not good that this is the best scene because it is monumentally stupid . They come up with this great plan to have a room flooded with ultra-violet light while all the men wear these heat-proof spacesuits so the Predator can't see them and on top of that , they put this special dust in the air that will adhere to the Predator's body and make him visible . Great plan , except for the massive flashlights that everyone wears on their shoulders . This is the FBI ! I learned in 7th grade that almost without exception , there is NO LIGHT WITHOUT HEAT . Did the FBI not realize that these flashlights were going to generate heat ? My GOD . The Predator is just as ugly as in the original , but the mask has been reduced to a cheap Halloween mask , almost as bad as the Green Goblin's mask from Spider-Man . He's got this cool boomerang weapon that seemingly can cut through anything that it comes into contact with , but he talks in this movie . I hate that . Here's this alien , and he learns English just enough to deliver a couple of one-liners at exactly the right moments . At the time of this writing I have yet to see Alien vs . Predator , but I can only hope that they don't talk to each other in it . Leave the talking to Freddy ! ( spoilers ) The grand finale of the movie starts off with a massive hole in both the script and basic logic . Harrigan finds himself hanging from the cables beneath an elevator as it descends , and he's screaming at the people inside it to stop the elevator so it doesn't crush him . Forget the fact that elevators stop a good 6-10 feet above the ground at the bottom of their shafts , this one not only has a rough hole at the bottom , but when Harrigan lets go of the cable , he falls through it and into a massive open area . The scene could ALMOST be saved if it were the basement , but it turns out to be the Predator's cavernous lair . Right there in the basement of some building in downtown LA . And no one ever noticed . We get this lengthy fight scene between Harrigan and the Predator , after which a whole crowd of Predators shows up ( why they didn't come out to help their friend is not explained or wondered about ) , so Harrigan accepts defeat , but it turns out that they only wanted to come collect their dead and give Harrigan a gun from the early 18th Century , raspily muttering , ' Take it . ' What the hell is this ? ? Predator 2 is such a bad film that the Predator is the hero rather than the villain . He is the center of attention and we are watching to see these clueless morons get killed by him rather than to see them use their tactical expertise to do away with this unknown enemy , as was the case in the original film . Director Stephen Hopkins has turned the movie away from the action / sci fi of the original and into a horror movie . It's just too bad he couldn't do the same with the comedy that he worked on before this movie , A Nightmare on Elm Street 5 . The movie ends with a hint at a Part 3 ( with the line ' They'll get their chance . ' ) and I can only hope that AVP is that movie , because the last thing we need is more of this ! |
544,587 | 562,732 | 97,981 | 4 | The politics of evil . | Part 1 was the original , with the deadly haunted dreams . Part 2 was the later return to the house in which the girl went insane . Part 3 was the obligatory haunted mental hospital . Part 4 comes pretty close to Part 5 , in which Freddy can kill Alice's friends , as she helplessly brings them one after another into her dreams . Where , you ask , do the writers go from here ? Babies ! ( spoilers ) So the first thing that pops into my mind when I see a Nightmare on Elm Street movie with the subtitle The Dream Child is that the writers were running out of excuses to put Freddy back on the screen . Better create a distraction . An interesting thing to consider , I think , is whether this installment in the series leans toward pro-choice or pro-life , because it definitely makes strong comments about abortion . My guess is that the movie is actually pretty heavily pro-choice , which I base not on personal belief but on the way it blatantly ridicules common reasons that people give for not pursuing the termination of an unwanted pregnancy . Take the scene where Alice has an emergency ultra-sound , in which she is able to see her baby in her womb . When confronted about the option of abortion , she responds with something like , ' No , I want to keep it , it's part of me and Jesse . ' Yes , it's a part of you and Jesse . And Freddy freaking Krueger . And 100 rapist maniacs . And the embodiment of pure evil . At the risk of offending any pro-life readers who might be reading this , I bet there were a lot of opponents of abortion who were slapping their heads at this nonsense . Personally I would think that at least that vision that she had of Freddy inside her very womb caressing her hideous , hideous monster of a baby would make her realize that it was part of a lot more than her and Jesse . As far as Freddy himself , he has long since lost all ability to provide scares , ever since he became a goofy , wise-cracking moron with blades on his hands . You can't really be scared by a horror movie villain who thinks he's a stand-up comedian . But hey , maybe that's just me . The special effects have taken on a similar lackluster tinge , it now being obvious that the movies are exercises in coming up with new and creative ways of turning Freddy into other objects . The comic book content , with Freddy turning one victim into one of his own drawings before cutting him up like a piece of paper are a little too artsy for me , and the worst part of the entire film is what should have been the best , the ending . While you're trying to figure out if they were trying to re-create an M . C . Escher drawing or copy a scene from Labyrinth ( which , unlike this one , fit into that film as snugly as a puzzle piece ) , you might forget what's happening and why they're even there . There is a serious problem with the plot itself in this installment as well . There is a cameo part played by a little boy ( Whitby Hertford ) , who overall seems to play no other part than to look creepy and thicken the plot . Yes , it turns out that Alice eventually realizes he's her future son ( hence his creepiness ) and that she needs to save him from Freddy , who is trying to teach him all of his evil ways , but he pops up when needed and disappears when he's unnecessary . Even worse , in the tenuous connection to Part 4 , in which Freddy killed all of Kristen's friends by forcing her to bring them into her dreams , he is now killing people based on the dreams of Alice's beloved ' he's-part-of-me-and-Jesse ' baby . Yes , this is completely ludicrous , but the baby was simply a distraction , remember ? The point is that it provides lots more teenagers for Freddy to have his way with . But given the precipitous trend the movies have been following , at this point in the series it seems less and less unlikely that an installment featuring one killing scene blandly following another , punctuated periodically by uninteresting ( although , admittedly , increasingly competent ) special effects is on its way . Oh yeah , and lots of dumb jokes . |
543,957 | 562,732 | 232,500 | 4 | At least someone finally found a use for all of those ridiculous cars . . . | Yes , The Fast and the Furious is exactly what the previews showed . A bunch of real charmers who race around in those ridiculous cars that you always see driving down the road , desperately trying to be cool . Here you have a gang of guys with seemingly endless financial ability to pack into these cars every kind of racing part imaginable , but the difference between these and the cars you see bouncing down the road in your local town is that they actually race these ones . The story is made up of the old cop undercover as one of the stylish bad guys , but it just doesn't work here . If you want to see a good movie with a plot like that , watch Point Break . Paul Walker plays Brian , the undercover cop in question , and Vin Diesel is Dominic Toretto , the leader of the gang that Brian is trying to infiltrate as he investigates a string of truck hijackings that are being perpetrated by a trio of extremely recognizable Hondas . Why would anyone in their right mind do so many robberies all with cars that have green lights underneath them ? Is that just so that , when they get caught , the police will have no trouble linking them with every truck they've ever robbed ? Not smart , guys . And besides that , you wouldn't think they'd feel too confident driving next to an 18-wheeler in a little tiny Honda . ( spoilers ) And the , of course , you have the goofball romance . Brian falls in love with Mia , Dominic's sister , which complicates his job . Dominic himself confuses us by being the biggest badass in this whole gang of racers while dating the ugliest and bitchiest girl in the entire movie . The first race scene in the film is among the funniest scenes , because it involves four cars racing at 140-odd mph down the streets of Los Angeles , with hundreds of on-lookers . I love how they can do this without worrying about traffic or police , I guess that one guy with the police scanner was all that would be needed for such an extravaganza . Also look for director Rob Cohen as the pizza guy who shows up briefly in this scene . As far as traffic , they must have scanners for that , too , because you'll notice a total absence of any kind of traffic during the truck robberies . And it sure is nice of the truck drivers to drive smoothly and keep speed with the Hondas while they shoot crossbows into the cab and pull out the windshield . This is an action movie for car people , because it is all about the kind of cars that these people fantasize about owning , for some reason . You can see the real version of this movie playing on main streets of towns all over the world , I'm sure . In Fresno , California , for example you can drive down Blackstone Avenue at 1am on a Saturday night , and in every other empty parking lot you'll see 10 or 12 guys standing forlornly around 2 or 3 cars that desperately try to look like the cars in this movie , and this is the reality that The Fast and the Furious exaggerates and tries to make glamorous - a bunch of guys trying to be cool by standing next to cars that are full of racing equipment that they don't use . The Fast and the Furious is all about the Hollywood version of these guys , traveling around in packs and driving cars with tremendously souped-up engines , carrying thick wads of rubber band-bound cash in their shirt pockets , and spending the night life with women borrowed from the rock stars while they revel in the tremendous financial spoils of the race wars . While it is almost amusingly obvious how fake this all is , the movie doesn't pretend to be anything else . You know on your way in that this is an action film with a low IQ , and in that sense , the movie does deliver . The chase scenes are unmistakably exciting , however unrealistic they are , and it's fun to watch this whole plot about this idiot cop who recklessly tries to make his way into this gang . The end of the film is utter nonsense , with Brian finally reaching his goal that he has been seeking and risking his life for during the entire film , and he gives it up as soon as he achieves it . It ends with Dominic in his dad's old race car , the one that he's always been afraid to drive , and he is at a stop light remembering that it's exactly a quarter of a mile to that railroad crossing up ahead . The movie once again proves how much it borrowed from Point Break as he decides to race this car to that crossing , and Brian inexplicably decides to race along-side him . They barely escape from the oncoming train , as was to be expected , and then just after Dominic wrecks his father's car , Brian gives him the keys to his own car ( the one provided to him by the police for his undercover work ) , and the film ends just before the police arrive on the scene to strip Brian of his badge send him back to the community college . The Fast and the Furious is a movie for immature action fans , the type who regard Van Damme films as their favorites , but it is almost worth watching just for the racing scenes . All of these scenes are overblown in some way , but they are almost always entertaining , at least on some morbidly amusing level . Luckily , you already know the type of drivel that this movie is , so at least you will be in the right state of mind when you watch it . |
544,847 | 562,732 | 71,807 | 4 | The Man With The Plastic Gun . | Besides being the worst James Bond film ever , The Man With The Golden Gun had by far the most disgustingly awful opening theme song of the entire series . This time around , Bond faces an unimaginative villain named Scaramanga who has a third nipple and a midget sidekick , charmingly named Nik Nak . It seems that Scaramanga has gotten a hold of a priceless device that is capable of converting sunlight into electricity , effectively rendering him the most powerful man in the world in the middle of an energy crisis , purposely coinciding with the energy crisis of the early 1970s . Besides that , he seems to have developed an interest in exterminating Bond himself , to add to his growing collection of murdered double oh's . The main advantage that Scaramanga has is the thing that made it possible for this to have been a much more interesting film - no one knew where he was or what he looked like . Unfortunately , the nearly endless possibilities that this fact creates for the film are largely ignored , and we get an unusually run-of-the-mill spy film with this entry into the already extensive 007 series . As is very much the tradition by now , there are plenty of amusing names for the characters in this Bond film , such as the above mentioned Nik Nak , as well as others , such as the Bond girl , Good Night , one of Scaramanga's associates , Hi Fat , and a naked Asian hottie named Chu Me . Roger Moore fits the spy element of the James Bond character fairly well , but as is the case in every Bond film that he starred in , he is totally unconvincing as the endlessly charming womanizer that Sean Connery so effectively portrayed . ( spoilers ) There is an interesting scene in The Man With The Golden Gun in which Bond pretends to be Scaramanga to talk to Hi Fat , who has never seen him , which leads into the most interesting part of the film . There are a lot of plot twists during the duration of the film , and this makes it a lot more entertaining because you never know who knows what . Hi Fat takes Bond in as Scaramanga , but then when he leaves , we find out that Scaramanga was on the island he entire time , and both men know that it was Bond posing as Scaramanga . There were also plenty of idiotic fight scenes in the movie , such as the laughable scene between Bond and a couple of sumo wrestlers . Needless to say , the sumo wrestlers EVENTUALLY win the fight , at which point Nik Nak joins in half naked ( did we really need to be subjected to that ? ) to finish him off . Luckily , Hi fat interrupts just in time to save his life and " send him to school " instead , sending him to some kind of martial arts school , which is held on an impressive set that is amazingly reminiscent of something out of an Akira Kurosawa film . Unfortunately , this is also followed by loads of pathetically staged fight scenes , but luckily , it's followed by a thankfully well-done car chase . The car turning into a plane was too much , as was the jump over the river ( but at least it was pretty impressive ) , but the chase itself , for the most part , was pretty good , despite the fact that Bond had a redneck salesman as a completely unnecessary passenger . Ultimately , Bond is invited to Scaramanga's lair to partake in a civil dinner that desperately but vainly tries to achieve the same effectiveness achieved by the identical scene in Dr . No , but this rivalry finalizes in a trivial duel between Bond and Scaramanga . The final conflict is one of the least effective of all of the Bond films , and the by now clichéd ending on a ship in the middle of the ocean didn't help much either . It is never very clearly explained why the entire island would self-destruct if the sub-zero helium rose in temperature even the smallest amount , and we're left with a lot of questions and not a very impressive film . After this installment , it's amazing that Moore was ever hired to play Bond again . |
543,938 | 562,732 | 424,129 | 4 | It should have been so much more ? | When I say that Gunner Palace should have been more , I don't mean that it should have been a better or more in-depth look at the lives of the troops in Iraq . Indeed , it is one of the closest looks at the daily lives of the soldiers over there that we have been able to see since the war started , but Director Michael Tucker has no idea how to get good interviews from the soldiers , and he messes it up even worse when he decides to talk . It's really sad that so many of the soldiers were handed this incredible opportunity to give a first account depiction of what their experience is like in Iraq and they use it to just screw around and act like idiots . Granted , a lot of these kids are barely out of high school , but I wish Tucker would have concentrated on the ones that had something important to say . I have all the respect in the world for these guys , but when it comes to getting an idea of what it's like to live in Iraq in a time of war , I'd be happy to stick to the guys that want to really talk about what's important , I could do without the interviews of the guys that just want to be funny . The guys that just want to be funny , of course , do not include the musicians featured in this documentary . Most of them are not making the kind of music that I am interested in but it is good to see that so many of them take their difficult experiences and channel it into something productive . The biggest problem that I had with this movie , however , is the goofy , melodramatic voice-over that Tucker put in every once in a while . Yes , it is some pretty dramatic subject matter , but the way that Tucker narrates this documentary reminds me at times of the way John Bunnell hosts World's Wildest Police Videos . He over-dramatizes everything in a way that just makes it sound goofy ( I once saw an episode where a car running from the police went briefly onto the shoulder on a country road and knocked down a couple of pieces of rotted wood that were sticking up through the dry grass , and Bunnell chimes in , " the fleeing madman SMASHES through a wooden barricade ! ! ! " ) . Tucker doesn't fill his documentary with unnecessary hyperbole like Bunnell does , but rather with a misplaced theatrical performance as the narrator . Where simple descriptions would have been sufficient , Tucker opts for an added performance that just makes him hard to listen to . When it comes to a direct look at the lives of the troops in Iraq , I just don't think anything extra is necessary , but it seems that he concentrates more on this than on the really relevant things that are going on . There are some soldiers who do give important insight , but so much time is wasted and so much extra fluff is put in that it makes a lot of the documentary look like farce . |
543,859 | 562,732 | 328,107 | 4 | A revolution in subtitle technology ! | In a time when the cineplexes are heavily populated with revenge tales , Man On Fire ( which could just as easily have been titled Kill Bills or The Other Punisher or Walking Tall and Furious ) is not exactly a breath of fresh air . Denzel Washington takes on the role of a family-less drifter of a man trying to outrun a past that is never explained very clearly , beyond the fact that he is trying to drown it in a bottle of Jack Daniel's , but even then only long enough to allow the audience to develop a healthy bit of doubt about his character . Maybe it would create more tension later if we weren't really sure we could trust him or not . Unfortunately , Denzel Washington , a massively talented actor , has become increasingly typecast as the desperate black guy determined to break any rules necessary to get what he wants , be it a heart for his son , revenge for the alleged killing of a girl that he was just hired to watch , etc . I was disappointed by Training Day because it was more violent than it had any reason to be , and John Q looked like just another desperate father trying to save his son tale and turned out to be exactly that with no twists or anything added to make itself necessary . Structurally , Man On Fire is designed a bit like Out of Time ( one of Denzel's better recent movies ) , with much of the first portion of the film dedicated to presenting the flaws in Creasy's ( Washington ) character . He has a dark past , he has no solid footing anywhere so he kind of drifts around in search of meaningful ( or , failing that , meaningless ) employment , and as he explains to a cautious mother as she interviews him for the job of being her daughter's bodyguard , he drinks . Speaking of the daughter , Dakota Fanning is an impossibly adorable child actor , and it seemed like a shame to me that Tony Scott didn't think that was enough to endear her to the audience . Instead of making her a charming ten-year-old daughter ( actually , I think her character in the movie was even younger than that ) who could have been further endearing because of what would be an expected level of fright at her surroundings ( being a little American girl living in the heart of Mexico City ) they go so far over the top that she ultimately becomes the kind of child that could only exist in an action movie where she gets kidnapped . Within a minute of introducing her onscreen , we have already learned that she plays the piano , speaks two languages ( granted , this is to be expected since she's American and lives semi-permanently in Mexico City ) , and says things like ' Yes , mother , ' and ' Right this way , Mr . Creasy . ' What kid talks like that ? On the other hand , it later makes more sense that she is portrayed as Super Daughter , because ' Mr . Creasy ' later goes on to exact Super Revenge for her kidnapping and apparent murder . This , unfortunately , is where the movie really begins to slip . Man On Fire may have a lengthy running time of almost two and a half hours because it took so much time at the beginning to introduce us to Creasy and , more importantly , to show the relationship between him and Pita ( Fanning ) develop from uncomfortable to inseparable . It soon becomes clear that the reason for this is to create a strong enough bond to justify Creasy going on to brutally torture the men involved in her kidnapping . Make no mistake , the audience suffers through these scenes as well , so you better make sure you're also pretty ticked off about the kidnapping . ( spoilers ) Creasy delivers the cold platter of revenge to several of the bad guys in such ways as cutting a guy's fingers off while his hands are duct taped to the steering wheel and then cauterizing the stubs with the cigarette lighter , and even better , informing a man tied to the hood of a car that while he was passed out ( presumably from being beaten ) , Creasy took the liberty of inserting a highly explosive suppository which will detonate after his little interview . Pretty creative stuff , and exactly what our base human instincts like to see happen to someone who would kidnap and kill a little girl , but once the vicious revenge has been delivered , she turns up alive ! OOPS ! Admittedly , they're still bad guys . They still kidnapped the girl and demanded money , but as it turns out , it was the father who planned the thing in the first place , and he gets the most merciful killing , if you would qualify his death as a killing , per se . Why is the man who is guiltier than anyone , and the worst person in the world to have done what he did , given the most mercy ? The other guys tried desperately to convince Creasy while he tortured and killed them that they were only following orders , they were only doing a job and they were impartial , and it turned out that they were telling the truth . Criminals , yes , but did they really deserve explosive suppositories ? In one scene , the father tearfully tells his wife that he thought their daughter would be treated well , that she would be watching cartoons and eating ice cream , and given her physical state when she turned back up at the end of the movie , that probably is how she was treated . The question is not whether Creasy can be expected to have known this . He was convinced that she was dead , and really had no reason to believe that she was alive . The problem is that this is how the movie was written . The plot did not happen accidentally , it was deliberately created this way . We are given an abduction set-up , briefly informed of the family's large-scale financial difficulties ( the rather ham-handed foreshadowing of who was behind the whole thing ) , and then Creasy goes on his rampage . The movie exists so that this man can seek brutal revenge against the killers of a young girl , then she turns up alive and not a word is spoken about the delivery of harsher deaths than were deserved . Maybe this was why Creasy came to the end that he did . He was beyond redemption and was driven off in the custody of the bad guys , presumably to be tortured . Luckily for him , he drifts peacefully off into a calmer death than he could otherwise have expected , his medallion of the Patron Saint of Lost Causes in his hand . The ending is really the only part that is morally justifiable . Creasy can't live happily ever after because of what he has done , but he can't really be blamed exactly because of what he thought that he was seeking vengeance for . The direction is innovative but unnerving , with Tony Scott's signature lightning fast editing ( better used in intense action scenes than throughout an entire film , as you can see here ) zooms across the screen , with the exposure also inexplicably flying up and down like a roller coaster , blinding you one second and then darkening so fast that it's not always even the next second . Sometimes it's blindingly bright one second and then dark later in that same second . I imagine the point is to throw the audience off a little , make them feel just a little uncomfortable , but didn't the snapping off of the fingers and the sizzling cauterizing of the stumps already do that quite enough ? Evidently not , so while you're busy chasing the most energetic subtitles in film history across the screen , try to remember that yes , revenge is a dish best served cold , but it's at least as important to keep in mind that it is a dish best served to people who really deserves such large helpings . |
543,813 | 562,732 | 834,001 | 4 | Werewolves and Lycans Show No Signs of Getting Along ? | You may remember that Kate Beckinsale was featured even more prominently on the poster for Underworld 2 than she was for the original movie . Now , you might notice that the poster for the third installment in the series features Bill Nighy in full , cadaverous glory . So the reason Bill Nighy's character is not only featured so prominently on the movie's poster but is also alive again ( you may remember that he was spectacularly dispatched in the first film ) is because , as promised by the studios , this is " the prequel you've been waiting for . " This is , of course , studio talk for " this movie will answer all your Underworld questions " and " no , Kate Beckinsale isn't in it . " The rest of the cast , however , human and mechanical alike , are in their best form , so it's surprisingly easy not to miss her . I've watched both previous Underworld films within the last two days , and the close proximity of the two movies reminds me how amazingly similar they are in story and appearance , so I anticipated more of the same with part 3 and I was hardly disappointed . Fans of the series are sure to get a kick out of this obligatory extra movie , although it was hardly justified given the first two . Maybe I'm a callous , modern American movie-goer without the necessary attention span , but I just wasn't really feeling the need for another two hours about the war between the werewolves and lycans . At any rate , when it all started , the vampires were in control . They ruled the lands and the werewolves were their slaves , they were used to protect and build the vampire kingdom . The werewolves are unable to ever take human form because of the collars they are forced to wear around their necks , and Viktor holds the key . But since slave societies have an understandable tendency to eventually organize and revolt against their oppressors , it's safe to assume that Viktor's authority is soon to be challenged . Lucian , the Lycan leader that we met in the original film ( the one that Viktor and everyone else didn't believe could possibly still be alive ) , although a slave himself , has been amassing a rebel Lycan army and , with the support of his true love Sonia ( Viktor's vampire daughter ) , he declares a war against the vampires that will last for centuries . The movie has exactly the same look as the first two movies , although Beckinsale and her husband Les Wiseman , the director of the first two movies , have taken off , leaving directing duties to Patrick Tatopoulos , who had never directed a feature film before but who has an astonishing list of credits in the special effects and art departments . And his work shows , too . He knows how to create great horror creatures , and the movie takes place in an undisclosed but effective enough corner of the medieval world , where their uppity Shakespearean language doesn't look quite so out of place as in the previous two movies , when they were surrounded by cell phones and handguns and high technology . Unfortunately , the werewolves and vampires are still played by human actors , and the movie is unable to get past that ancient horror hurdle created by the fact that humans pulling their lips back to reveal fangs is simply not scary . It never has been and it never will be . And that colored contact lens thing , man . Don't even get me started on that . I can't shake the feeling that that was a goofy cliché back in the late 90's . Marilyn Manson stretched that as far as it would go but it's over now ! Move on ! In fact , hold on a second ? " ATTENTION MOVIE STUDIOS ? COLORED CONTACT LENSES IN ANY MOVIE , IN ANY GENRE , WILL NEVER EVER EVER LOOK LIKE ANYTHING OTHER THAN COLORED CONTACT LENSES . PLEASE MAKE A NOTE OF IT . " OK , sorry , I just had to get that out . But on the other hand , at least they've stopped doing that thing where a vampire will hold a victim at arm's length , stretch their mouth open as wide as possible , and slowly move their distended jaws down to the exposed neck so the camera can get a sufficient shot of the fangs so that anyone who might have gotten up to get popcorn will make it back before the fangs are off screen . I can put up with a lot at the movies , but the next time I see THAT little trick I'm walking out of the theater . There is a curious debate raised by the fact that for a good portion of the film , Lucian carelessly blows away his own kind , the lycans , by rationalizing that they are simply mindless beasts , despite the fact that their behavior clearly displays intelligence . There is something to be said about that rationalization , but I don't care to go into it here because it will no doubt make my review prohibitively long and then no one will really care to read it anyway . Hopefully I'm no there already . Suffice it to say that Underworld 3 is a fan's film . There are films that are brilliant critical successes , there are films that are popular successes , and there are films that fail spectacularly in both arenas but remain genuinely loved by die-hard fans . It's not hard to see where Underworld 3 belongs . |
543,796 | 562,732 | 92,225 | 4 | Modern day Bonnie and Clyde and so forth . | Emelio Estevez makes his writing and directorial debut in Wisdom , the story of a guy named John Wisdom who finds himself in sort of an early life crisis , I guess . Barely entering the real world , he is coming to realize that life is harder than he has been brought up to believe , and he becomes convinced that all this stuff he's been hearing all his life about how he can be anything he wants is not really true , and so he sets out to do what any rational person would do in such a situation . He embarks on a dizzyingly adventurous life of crime and the freedom of the open road . All can only end happily for everyone involved . But rather than become your typical bank robber , Wisdom , after brainstorming at length about the type of criminal that he aspires to be , decides he's going to be a criminal FOR the people . No one can be hurt by his crimes except for big evil corporations and , more specifically , greedy banks . Wisdom believes that he has been dealt an unfair hand in the game of life , and sitting in a bus station in the early part of his wandering , he sees a commercial that convinces him that this he's not the only one . Millions of hard working Americans work themselves to the bone for their entire lives , only to have everything taken away in a flash by the banks when they should be ready to retire in comfort and happiness . And as Brig . Gen . Francis X . Hummel said in The Rock , the situation is unacceptable . Hence we have an understandable concern about a truly troublesome situation of many people in America , but it's a weak premise for the rest of the movie , possibly because 24 year old Estevez , as Wisdom , looks like he's 16 years old in the entire movie . Granted , his character is not meant to be much older than that , but there is a definite element of juvenile grandiose fantasy that renders much of the movie into something of a high school kid's dream of fame and a life of righteous crime . Demi Moore , also 24 years old , plays the equally high school-ish love interest , oddly more ready to leave her boyfriend when he's in a persistent bad mood than she is when he runs out of a bank with a gun and jumps in her car and tells her to step on it with no warning or hesitation . The two ultimately become sort of a mesh of Bonnie and Clyde , Robin Hood , Mickey and Mallory , etc . , as they cross the country holding up banks , but only for the purpose of burning lots of mortgage records , thereby erasing massive amounts of working class debt . Evidently mortgage companies and banks hold only a single solitary copy of debt records , and clearly there can't have been any computerized records , this is 1986 after all . Computers were like the size of Volkswagens back then , weren't they ? So here are a few reasons that the movie is just about unwatchable . First , there is the acting . I'll just specify the scene where Wisdom finally is able to talk to his parents after being on the run for several days . Very emotional , and quite possibly the least bearable scene in the film . Just stop , Emilio . This , as Roger Ebert might say , is a scene meant to be cut up and made into ukulele picks for the poor . Second , there's the pursuit . The FBI is chasing them , and at one point the head FBI agent worriedly hopes that they can get to them before they get to a certain bank . Would it not be prudent to send some agents straight to that bank to meet them ? Thirdly , there's the simplicity of it all . Americans in debt , Wisdom comes in armed with an Uzi to save the day . Please . The last line in the film , more than any other line in any other movie I've ever seen , completely cancels itself out . It literally would have made no difference if the final line had been ' Why did we even make this movie ? ' ( spoilers ) You can kind of track the progression of the writing , the ideas changing and evolving as the story develops . First there's the young kid trying to make some sense out of what he has to work with in his life , then the determined young man out to help his fellow man , then the Robin Hood , sequence , then Bonnie and Clyde after they tarnish their consciences , then the high speed pursuit as the police close in on them despite their own incompetence . The car chase is a great scene , it's a surprisingly well-made car chase for such a weak film , but the build up is heavily flawed . The scene where Demi kills the sheriff is a real forehead slapper . On the run and with their faces plastered all over the TV and newspapers , Karen ( Moore ) walks into a convenience store and is shocked to find the sheriff walking in . So what does she do ? She walks toward the door , stops behind him , and stares at him like a frightened deer , motionless until he can gradually recognize her . At one point , he even asks her , ' Are you okay , miss ? ' Sure , she was terrified , but I get so tired of scenes where you're sitting there yelling at the screen because all she has to do is keep walking . Had she just walked out , chances are the sheriff wouldn't have thought twice about it , and just kept right on living . But no , she had to pull out her gun and shoot him , and then jump into the car with her boyfriend so they can zoom down the highway to their deaths . Sadly , once that car chase is over , it's all downhill . You can't really root for Wisdom to run around killing people , because he's not supposed to be a bad guy and is definitely not supposed to be a killer . Like his choices in life , he was supposed to have been DRIVEN to it by society . He had no choice , right ? So why not return fire when they shoot Karen near the end of the film after they try to steal the Mustang ? That jerk shot your girlfriend out of a helicopter , man ! Shoot it down ! Here's my theory ? Estevez HAD to have known that his audience was going to want him to return fire , the FBI agent had long since been established as an antagonist . I'm sure Emilio wanted to put that in the script as well , a great way for them both to go out in a glorious hail of bullets , he probably just didn't have the budget to blow up a helicopter . So we get this scene in the football stadium . Why the cops went there in the first place I have no idea . The movie knows what it wants to do and , thematically , it sets about to do it in a straight line . Unfortunately the characters change constantly , each one making ridiculous decisions out of the blue or to support the ridiculous decisions of the other ones , gradually changing into different people as a life of crime can do , but doing so through a series of wholly unbelievable scenes and events . And besides that , Demi had yet to make much of an impression , which surely must have worried her since she has a 10th grade education and doesn't have a lot to fall back on besides acting , and let's face it , Emilio had a rough introduction to writing and directing . Evidently he learned a lot of lessons from this movie before coming back in spectacular form in 1990 . |
544,772 | 562,732 | 339,147 | 4 | What a disappointment . | I forget what movie it was that I rented that had a preview for this one included on the DVD , but I saw the preview for this film and for Grand Theft Parsons , which I would otherwise not have looked twice at because Johnny Knoxville stars in it , but they both looked like pretty good movies , so I rented this one . Big mistake . Jim Caviezel , who will probably spend the rest of his career being known as the guy who played Jesus in The Passion of the Christ , plays James Cray here , a man determined to capture the man who deliberately killed his wife in a hit and run accident . The best thing that the movie has going for it is that it has flickers of strength periodically displayed in the structure of the story , which gradually reveals meaning within its ugly occurrences . It is revealed more than midway through the film that after his wife was struck and killed , Rennie chased down the perpetrating vehicle , ultimately slamming into the side of it and landing himself in prison for three years and the murderer of his wife in all kinds of traction . The movie itself is some bizarre mixture of the basic , basic premise from Duel combined with elements of other bad thrillers like Crash and Wheels of Terror , a very obscure TV movie by which I happen to have had the great pleasure of being horribly bored . The problem is that it tries to create a human story behind what Rennie has been through , but then throws in this antagonist that is literally nothing more than a horror movie monster . He is not a car crash victim or a sick murderer who gets thrills from killing women with his car , he is a movie monster like the boss from The Mangler . It's hard to take a movie like this seriously when it's main opposing force is someone who is barely human and whose gigantic boat of a Cadillac is entirely indestructible . In thinking back on the level of misogyny displayed in the film , I am reminded of Pedro Almodóvar's 1986 film Matador , the opening scene of which I found so tremendously distasteful that I only made it about three minutes into the film before turning it off in disgust . I can scarcely imagine the remainder of Matador being able to justify the hideous nature of its opening sequence , but even with the much more subtle level of misogyny ( if it should even be called that ) displayed in this film is not justified by the rest of the movie . This is a very low-level thriller whose less-than-impressive performances deserved a better film . Avoid this one . |
544,855 | 562,732 | 69,332 | 4 | Sample dialogue : ' You'd give all this up ? 8-track stereo , color TV in every room ? it's the American dream ! ' | First you have to get over how catastrophically obsolete this film is , and then it might be enjoyable on some deep , subconscious level . Having watched it and learned that it was one of the most controversial blaxploitation films of the 70s , I am a little hesitant to write a scathing review of it , since I'm sure it has some sort of cult following somewhere , but the movie is so badly made and so goofy that it's almost impossible to praise it . I was also shocked to read one IMDb reviewer call the soundtrack one of the greatest in film history . Way off , buddy , but I am willing to admit that at one point , presumably early 1970s , this kind of music was considered great , but today it is so preposterous that it's almost weird . And by the way , I'd like to once again protest the word blaxploitation , an utterly meaningless description used to describe something which strikes me as something similar to those FUBU clothes , or rap music . By black people , for black people , so who they're exploiting and for whom is beyond me . Being mostly white myself , I'm outside the target audience , but I decided to watch it because I think that ancient styles are so funny . See the teenagers in 80s teen comedies or horror movies , for instance . Speaking of ancient styles , it's interesting to notice how much the typical audience has evolved over the years since Super Fly was made . A director today , for example , could never get away with making a movie like this , modern audiences just don't have the attention span . The movie moves along like a series of music videos , stopping periodically to insert some dialogue and characters and situations , after which it moves back into another music video . Even that sex scene in the bathtub seemed to go on forever , panning up and down and up and down and up and down the naked bodies in the tub , presumably long enough for the song to play out before we can move on to the next scene . From a technical standpoint , the film is an absolute disaster . There's a foot-chase early in the movie during which a wire of some sort falls directly in front of the camera lens not once , but twice , the audio is numerous scenes does not even remotely match the video ( the never-ending bathtub scene , for example ) , and the acting is abysmal . ( spoilers ) The story is about a drug dealer who wants to do the One Last Gig And Then Get Out For Good , and runs into all kinds of obstacles along the way . All of which , of course , are obstacles just long enough to create some periodic dialogue scenes and then become solved when it's time for the plot to move along . The ending has something of a twist , I suppose , although that may be because I was envisioning a bit of a tragic ending because of the way things were leading , but the movie as a whole is a tired , plodding exercise through the jive of the streets of the big city in the early 1970s , with lots of badass blacks and evil white cops screwing everything up . I don't like the way the black people were portrayed in the film , as far as being dedicated dope smugglers and cocaine dealers and whatnot , but I still don't think that the term blaxploitation is appropriate , because you have to admit that Priest's intentions were honorable . Sure , he had been leading a less than honorable life and had less than honorable means for getting out of it , but the important thing is that he wanted to get out , he wanted to change his life for the better . I think the only way that blaxploitation can be used to accurately describe movies like this is in the way stereotypes are used as a starting point for the story . Lots of black criminals , basically . I've heard that Denzel Washington has talked about doing a remake of this movie with the director of Training Day . Given how far Denzel has fallen in his acting career because he keeps making the same movie over and over , it seems that he doesn't care as much about where his career goes from now on . Surely he has more than enough money to last the rest of his life , but why would he want to do something as crazy as that ? Did he not see the train wreck that was Samuel L . Jackson's remake of Shaft ? |
543,769 | 562,732 | 280,590 | 4 | Mr . Deeds , in my opinion , marks a point in Adam Sandler's career where it seems that the majority of the thinking audience will , if they haven't already , begin to wonder whether Sandler will ever do anything | SPOILERS SPOILERS The new name for the character that Sandler plays in every movie is , in this case , Mr . Deeds , a small town man who learns that he is the inheritor of a massive fortune from a distant relative who is a media mogul . Deeds lives in the tiny town of Mandrake Falls , New Hampshire , where he is constantly the talk of the entire town , the borders of which do not seem to extend very far past the doors of the pizzeria that he owns . He comes to New York to see what all the financial fuss is about , and as all his friends at home watch him on TV , he proceeds to try to take part in the company rather than taking his inheritance and going back into obscurity where he clearly belongs . ( spoilers ) The fortune is , first of all , ridiculously exaggerated . There is no one in the target audience of this film ( nor , really , many people at all in the world ) who can really visualize how much money $40 billion exactly is . That's not even money , as James Caan said in The Way of the Gun ( where he speaks about $50 million , I believe ) , it's a new life . Money is what you get out of the ATM , it's what you take to the grocery store . $40 billion is so astronomical that they may as well have just said that Deeds has inherited all the money in the world . On the other hand , while I thought that the film had a positive message against greed and corruption , the fact that Deeds turned down the inheritance ( simply saying that he doesn't want that money ) could not have been more poorly executed . First of all , when he decides that he just doesn't want it , if you listen you can hear everyone in the audience slapping their foreheads almost as hard as when Mox pulled that ' oh-I-just-can't ' crap during the whipped cream bikini scene in Varsity Blues . Second , while it was nice to see that Deeds decides to donate the money to charity instead of accepting more money than any single human being could spend in 20 lifetimes with wide-eyed glee , this part of the film was probably the least creative thing in the entire movie , which wasn't very creative to begin with . I can imagine the writers of the movie writing this scene at the end of the day or right before their lunch hour , just because it's so obvious that it was slapped together . When Deeds asked the name of that one charity , you know , that one . . Yeah , give it to those guys . You can just picture the writers already half out of their chairs and on their way out of the room when someone says wait , what does he do with the money , and they say much the same thing that he says in the movie . You can almost see the indifferent wave of the hand and maybe something like , ' Oh , just have him give it to some charity . ' This reminds me of Hollow Man , which is a film that had nearly endless possibilities , which were all completely ignored in favor of a simplistic and clichéd plot . I know it may seem like I'm making a big deal about something that's kind of trivial , but it's really not . There could be a lot of meaning delivered in who he gives the money to , and it could have been a lot of fun , too . Even something as simple as what Rudy Duncan ( Ben Affleck ) did with all the money at the end of Reindeer Games ( 2000 ) was more creative and more fun than this . The whole plot involving Winona Ryder's character ( charmingly named ' Babe ' ) was crude and tacked on . While it was interesting that she played a character who tried to skewer Deeds to get a good news story ( albeit a heavily dramatized and altered one ) , the fact that she ultimately falls in love with him and has to convince him that she really loves him after he's already found out that she's been lying to him is one of the oldest plot ploys in the book of writing cheesy comedies ( and cheesy action movies , and cheesy dramas , etc . ) . Mr . Deeds is a film made for Adam Sandler films . I will readily admit that I enjoy many of Sandler's films ( such as Billy Madison , to some extent , The Waterboy , Happy Gilmore , which I LOVED , etc . ) , but for the same reason that I like to watch Van Damme and Steven Seagal movies . They are totally goofy B-movies , but there is some sort of backwards , amusing charm to them that makes them attractive . Critics are sure to hate those movies , as well as a movie like Mr . Deeds , and they have plenty of reason to , obviously , but Sandler fans are not likely to be entirely disappointed . |
543,809 | 562,732 | 100,114 | 4 | Seagal vs . freaky Jamaican crackheads ? | So Seagal plays a DEA detective named John Hatcher who lost his partner on a drug investigation into , surprise surprise , Colombia ! Not to brag or anything , but my father was born and raised in Colombia ( hence my last name ) , and now he's a doctor in California , so no matter what the movies would have you believe , there are some things other than drug dealers and cocaine that come out of Colombia ! At any rate , in a drug bust gone bad , Hatcher loses his partner and accidentally kills a naked Colombian prostitute , inspiring him to go to confession , somewhere that I have never seen him go before in any of his movies , before or since . It was actually pretty interesting . Seagal has a tendency to come off as almost asexual the way he never gets much involved with women other than as a plot device and the way the occasional seduction attempt , whether by a stripper or by a lover , never piques the slightest bit of interest from him . He's all get-the - bad-guys all the time . But in the confession booth , he confesses to having lied , sold drugs , falsified evidence , and even slept with informants in order to get the information he needed to put the bad guys behind bars ( I hope I'm not getting in trouble with God by telling you this ? ) . The priest tells him to go to his family , so he decides it's time to retire from the force . The next third of the movie is an exercise in the paper-thin characterization characteristic of Seagal's films . Marked For Death is the story of Seagal against a band of mystic Jamaican drug dealers , and these guys have no discretions about pushing their products in broad daylight . Hatcher goes back to visit his old high school coach , Max ( a minimal effort by Keith David ) , and right in the middle of practice there are some of these dread-locked crackheads sitting right there in the bleachers peddling crack to some bookworm-looking high school girls . Maybe I just had a sheltered experience in high school , but I didn't know crack dealers and crackheads hung out AT SCHOOL in the MIDDLE OF THE DAY . At any rate , it's not long before Hatcher learns how evil these guys are . They're not just peddling crack to high school kids , but the coach has been losing football players regularly to their drugs , they engage in smartass stare-downs with Max , and since that's not enough , his 13-year-old niece died in their crackhouse . Ah , OK . We get the picture . I'm sure they also torture puppies and beat up old women , and maybe steal candy from children too , just for good measure . Is it really this hard to establish who the bad guys are ? 13-year-old niece died in their crackhouse . Wow . Anyway . Not only does the movie not know how to develop villains without resorting to what basically boils down to movie name-calling , where evil deeds are shallowly assigned to them through dialogue , but they also don't know how they should act . The leader of the drug dealers , is named Screwface , and I suppose that alone should tell you something about the kind of movie this is . Screwface is a cartoonish Jamaican man with these bright , bizarrely green eyes , which I am guess must be an important part of his character because he spends a good majority of his screen time with his eyes half bulging out of his head . His favorite means of intimidation is to scream really loud in his wildly overblown Jamaican accent with his face quite literally less than an inch away from whoever he's yelling at . This guy likes to get so into guys ' faces that he has to turn his head to the side so their noses don't touch . All I could think about was how the poor guys would deal with his breath . Man , they do not want you to forget that these guys are Jamaican , by the way . Their accents are so exaggerated and overblown that for most of the movie it's nearly impossible to understand them . Not that it matters . It doesn't matter what they're saying , all you need to know is that everything that comes out of their mouths is some kind of evil drug-related thing , they're just the psychos that peddle drugs and kill people . The movie must have been a huge hit in Jamaica ! My biggest problem with the movie is that the theatrics , particularly of the bad guys , as I've described , are spectacularly goofy , even for a Seagal film . They are so cartoonish and weird that it's impossible to take them as anything other than a goofball b-movie creation , something slapped together to provide fodder to whom Seagal can distribute his characteristic brand of smack-down retribution . But there is also a bizarre kind of mysticism in the movie that just makes it all come off as weird . For example , a mystic , I guess you would call her , at one point puts some kind of curse on Screwface by ( if I remember correctly ) spitting mouthfuls of Bacardi onto a live rooster that's hanging upside down before beheading it and dripping its blood onto a picture of Screwface . Hmm . Interesting . Sadly , it's this same woman that warns Hatcher that his family has been " marked for death " by these people , meaning they've got some voodoo hex on them . Not to belittle anyone , but if I was told that my family had been cursed by people like that , I would just laugh at it . Hatcher doesn't strike me as the kind of guy to take much stock in freaky voodoo curses ! But the set-up , as you can see , is pretty standard for a Seagal film . Unique villains , I guess you could say , although not very impressive . Definitely the weirdest film of Seagal's early career ? |
543,829 | 562,732 | 79,257 | 4 | Let's hear it for Vestron Video ! ! | You know , I really have a problem with movie lists . I was reading Maxim magazine a while ago and they had a list of the 50 Greatest B-Movies of all time , and knowing me , I of course have to go through and watch them all and write reviews of all of them . This is why you see reviews of movies like Gator Bait and Barb Wire and Coffy on my list . So I noticed H . O . T . S . at the video store the other day and recognized it from Maxim's list of the 50 greatest B-movies , and I decided to rent it and check it out . My only consolation is that I rented it because I recognized it from a list of B-movies , so I already knew it was going to suck . Given the type of movie that it is , I can't say that H . O . T . S . is a total failure , since it is nothing more than a late 70s T & A film , and it never pretends to by anything else . The only place where it strays widely from its objective is in a ragged subplot involving a couple of ex-cons who have stashed a lot of stolen money in the house that the self-named H . O . T . S . move in to , because this subplot has absolutely no place in the movie . Despite the fact that the rest of the movie is as well , this subplot is completely superfluous and unnecessary . The story is based on a couple of rival sororities at the beloved F . U . , which exists as one of those Universities that contains a grand total of one sorority until the rejects form their own in order to get back at the snobs in the other one . This new sorority , Help Out The Seals ( H . O . T . S . ) , is a sorority supposedly based on helping seals ( the seal subplot is another one that doesn't really belong in the movie , and little attention is paid to the meaning of that name beyond having a seal running around here and there throughout the movie ) . This is going to sound weird , but there was actually one scene that I was pretty impressed with in this movie . One SHOT that I was impressed with , I should say . About midway through the movie , one of the girls in Pi , the rival sorority , is pouring alcohol into the punch , and she pours some for herself in a glass and drinks it . Oddly enough , what she does as she drinks that alcohol reminds me of something that Charlie Chaplin would do , which really brightened up the movie . Obviously , nothing in this movie comes close to anything that Chaplin ever did , but that shot alone raised my score for the movie from a 2 to a 4 . As a whole , however , the movie is exactly what you would expect it to be , a lot of people running around looking for excuses to take off their clothes ( I liked how the remove - one - piece - of - clothing - for - every - score in the football game at the end was one of the GIRLS ' ideas . Riiiiiiiiight ? ) , and not much thought is put into much of anything else . There is , for example , a scene early in the film when a couple of the Pi girls pour hot sauce into the refreshments at a H . O . T . S . party , accidentally getting caught in an incriminating photograph ( the girl taking the picture didn't realize that she photographed them at the time ) , although the photograph never comes up for any reason later in the film . I've seen movies like this before , it's kind of like Gator Bait but without the violence and the rednecks and Coffy wasn't far off . Even Barb Wire is much the same , just with a bigger budget and more silicon . Thankfully , Maxim's 50 B-movie list contains only a few more comedies , because while these cheesy teen T & A films are entertaining every once in a while as bad movies with the occasional semi-nude scene , after watching H . O . T . S . I think I've decided that I like the bad horror movies better than the bad comedies . I'd rather watch a lot of terrible actors pretend to be scared than pretend to be funny . |
544,800 | 562,732 | 963,178 | 4 | Most expensive movie I've slept through this year . | Tom Tykwer's The International came about with a lot of promise . It has all the makings of a classy , intelligent espionage thriller . I was expecting something in the vein of The Interpreter or at least some of the fast-paced action of the Bourne films , but such is not to be the case . The movie pitts Clive Owen , a cinematic force to be reckoned with , to be sure , against the villainously corrupt international banking infrastructure , which seems to have acquired a taste for enormous missile deals . Unfortunately , the movie plods through every imaginable espionage cliché , and somehow manages to make it's two hours feel like about five . And Tom Tykwer hasn't done anything interesting since his brilliant film Run Lola Run in 1998 , so it wasn't exactly a good career move to make such a high-profile and profoundly uninteresting film as this . Maybe it's because I'm an American who hasn't lived in America for a few years and so the economic crisis doesn't have much of an immediate scariness for me , but for whatever reason , I found the economic string-pulling here to be decidedly unthreatening . Clive Owen stars as Louis Salinger , a former Scotland Yard detective now working for Interpol and hot on the trail of what he is sure is a massive conspiracy of corruption and murder taking place within the banking industry . Naomi Watts is Eleanor Whitman , an American somehow involved with the New York District Attorney's office , who for some reason wants her to spend her time and energy to track down European banking criminals . You may find yourself spending the first half of the movie feverishly trying to follow the twists and turns of the plot and keep track of all of the intricacies of wrongdoing that grows deeper and deeper with every scene , but by about the hour mark it becomes pretty clear that the movie isn't going to do anything new , and isn't even going to try to cover the well - treaded ground that it covers in any kind of fresh or interesting way . It seems that an international bank called the IBBC has been engaging in shady arms deals which turn out to be efforts to control the debt created by international conflicts . " Control the debt , " we learn , " and you control everything . " I never really thought about it that way , although it does put my credit card debt in an entirely new perspective . I better pay that thing off , or I'm pretty sure I'm going to be somehow funding terrorist organizations . Unfortunately , the banks in The International are so cartoonishly villainous that it makes the movie almost impossible to take seriously . Of course , economists have analyzed the plot and assured us that such things could never happen in the real world , but for a movie like this to really be effective , it helps if the premise is at least a little bit believable . Banks are all around us and are not exactly in favor at the moment , but do they have to be portrayed as the epitome of soulless , power-hungry war-mongers that will stop at nothing , even such trifles as high-profile , public assassinations , in order to pursue their criminal designs ? Clive Owen's biggest task in the movie is to sell his astonishment at the mind-boggling revelation that money and power do , in fact , breed corruption , and Naomi Watts ' biggest task in the movie is to somehow come across as the slightest bit interesting when she bravely states that she intends to " blow this thing wide open . " Yawn . Am I getting spoiled ? Am I expecting too much from the movies ? There are few things I hate more than people who are totally ungrateful for what they have in life , but am I wrong to expect more from the movies than something like this ? Maybe I just expected a totally different pace in The International . The movie moves so slowly and ploddingly that by the time the climax finally lumbers across the screen I was spending almost as much time looking at my watch as I was spending looking at the movie . I kid you not , less than five minutes before the movie ended , in the heat of the climax of the film , I was distracted by a text message from my friend . It seemed that he was suffering from a terrible case of intestinal gas and was getting pretty anxious about the implications that it would have for the yoga class that he was about to teach . I texted him back the most reassuring message I could think of and then came back to the movie and discovered that I hadn't missed much . There is also little the matter of the Big Shootout . I don't want to ruin anything for you , but personally I am of the opinion that if I don't tell you that a two hour movie about banking corruption manages to culminate in a machine gun battle in none other than New York's Guggenheim Museum , I would be doing you a grave disservice . I've visited the Guggenheim's in Los Angeles and Bilbao , Spain , and while I haven't been to the one in New York , my understanding is that the resemblance of the re-created version for this movie is astonishing . Unfortunately , the mind-numbing machine gun battle that takes place in it is not . |
544,436 | 562,732 | 1,142,800 | 4 | Super-Sized Stripper Smacks Spectator ? ' Madea Goes To Jail ' Review ? | I guess I should start off by admitting that I've never seen any of the previous Madea films , and that I went into this movie knowing nothing about it except that it's the latest in a long line of similar films which have gotten about the same public response as your average Steven Seagal movie . And that's not good , in case you're wondering . That's okay though , because during the opening credits we see various headlines zooming across the screen , like " Super-Sized Stripper Smacks Spectator , " and we get the general idea . Madea has always been a problem for the police , she has a rap sheet a mile long and doesn't feel any need to change her behavior . The movie comes dangerously close to being another one of those intolerable comedies where Eddie Murphy or Martin Lawrence star as every character in the movie . Madea's family are clearly meant to resemble the Klumps , although I would be lying if I said that they were not entertaining . Uncle Joe in particular is a goofy caricature , but he's a hilarious one . The problem with the movie is that it tries to be two very different kinds of films , and it succeeds in being those two kinds of films , but the combination of the two styles kills this one completely . Half the movie is a light-hearted comedy in the vein of the Nutty Professors and Big Momma's House , but the other half of the film is a very serious drama that deals effectively with very serious issues . Life Is Beautiful is the only movie I've ever seen that really succeeds brilliantly at this story-telling technique , but that movie worked because it tied the two genres together . Life also comes close . This one , on the other hand , just throws the two halves in the same room and then sits back while they sit there not working . Dr . Phil makes a surprisingly hilarious cameo as a therapist that tries in vain to get Madae to admit that she has an anger management problem , which ultimately lands her in jail . Meanwhile , Josh Hardaway , the Assistant District Attorney , is experiencing a wonderfully developing career , until he meets Candace , a childhood friend who has fallen into a desperate situation after years of drugs and prostitution . He tries as hard as he can to help her despite the hysterical and ridiculous whining of his horrid fiancé . This is one of the worst parts of the movie , by the way . There is nothing worse than a romantic comedy that pits two suitors ( male or female ) against each other for the love of the main character , when one of the suitors is clearly tailor made to be the right choice and the other is an intolerable jerk-off . See 27 Dresses and you'll know what I mean . Josh's fiancé in this movie is unfortunately such a nagging , conniving wench that it's impossible to have any feelings towards her other than animosity . This is not a good start for a movie whose story is driven by the characters . Almost from the moment she enters the movie I was just waiting for Josh to come to his senses and boot her to the curb where she belongs . The issues of prostitution and drugs and drugs are taken very seriously , there's even a pretty intensely emotional scene involving one of the key male characters , who breaks down completely under the weight of a tragic event for which he has never been able to forgive himself . The acting is superb in this scene , but it is genuinely bizarre when Madea shows up again and we realize what the rest of the movie is like . It's impossible to tell if this is supposed to be a comedy or a drama , because both elements are done fairly well but they simply don't work when put together . I don't need my movies to be categorized , in fact I am pleasantly surprised when films cleverly bend genres , but this one gives us one character with a truly frightening history of drugs and prostitution and another character who lifts a car up on giant forklifts and then drops it 30 feet onto the pavement when a callous owner steals her spot at K-Mart . Ultimately Madea and Candace get locked up in the same prison , and the two stories attempt in vain to come together . I won't say that all of the character are utterly uninteresting , although there are several points where a stupendous lack of screen writing ability is made abundantly clear . Consider this exchange between Candace and her new cell-mate , who happens to be one of her old , close friends ? Candace : " You look good . " Cellmate : " Yeah , I'm doin ' good . How you doin ' ? " Are you serious ? I'm doin ' good ? How you doin ' ? Is this an inside joke ? You're both in prison ! Who says they're doin ' good or asks someone else how they're doin ' when both of them are in prison ? But maybe I'm nitpicking . There are moments of fun in the movie , there are a few laugh out loud moments , and there are some moments of pretty impressive acting , but the movie as a whole , unfortunately , adds up to something much , much less than the sum of its parts . |
543,933 | 562,732 | 58,084 | 4 | Don't freeze , freezing only makes you look guilty ! | I must have seen a lot more bad movies than the other reviewers who have reviewed this movie on the IMDb , because while it's definitely a long defunct sci fi flick , it wasn't THAT bad . In the world of bad movies , Frozen Alive is nowhere near the bottom of the barrel , but it's still pretty unendurable . The story is flat as a pancake and is never interesting , but the main problem is that it is so clearly two different kinds of movies squeezed into one , and the result just doesn't work . A scientist is working on a system of deep-freezing monkeys , and then decides to use himself as a human test subject . Unfortunately , just before his own deep freeze , his wife dies a violent death and he becomes the prime suspect . The police investigators , of course , come knocking just as he is entering deep freeze , which is not exactly a quick catnap that he can be shaken awake from . One half of the story deals with the scientist , a mid-50s or so man with salt and pepper hair and intense facial features , and his enormously alcoholic wife , a blonde bimbo who looks no less than 30 years his junior . It's too bad that they have no chemistry on screen whatsoever , otherwise this portion of the story would have been slightly less pathetic . The scene where he is holding her in his arms and telling her he wants them to try for a baby is highly disturbing . The other half of the story deals with the deep freeze experimentation . This is the part that would make this a sci fi movie , although there is nothing really sci fi about it . If he had frozen himself and woken up in another time , then you have sci fi . Instead , he just freezes himself and then wakes back up . Who cares ? As a result , it comes off as nothing more than a goofy crime drama soap opera about a guy trying to design a perfect cryogenetic freezer . And it's a shame , because there's a chance that there could have been two separate , and much better , movies made with this story . . . |
543,775 | 562,732 | 208,988 | 4 | Yes , it was as dumb as the trailer made it look . | While it's true that Get Carter was a ridiculous film , if you hated it , you have no one to blame but yourself . Unfortunately , Sylvester Stallone may be the most typecast actor working today , and the type of role that he is able to fill is generally found in terrible action films , like this one . There's not much left to do in the whole tough guy revenge type of action film ( was there much in the first place ? ) , and Get Carter covers no new ground . Not only is this movie awkwardly trying to resurrect a thankfully dead theme , but it is also even a re-make of the 1971 version of Get Carter , which was exactly the same premise . Some huge tough guy from out of town is here to revenge his brother , no matter who tries to stop him or for what reason . This stuff belongs in action movies that do not try to hide the fact that they are goofy B-movies ( ever see Kickboxer ? ) . The mystery behind the fact that a respected actor made the potentially career damaging decision to act in this film ( Michael Caine ) can be answered because he played the part of Jack Carter in the original 1971 version of Get Carter , which is far superior to this re-make . However , despite the fact that this film was a bitter disappointment , it did have it's redeeming values . John C . McGinley delivered one of the better performances in the entire film , and the fight scenes were entertaining enough , despite their ridiculous exaggeration . There can be no mistake that this is goofy cinema , so if you decide to watch it , keep that in mind . |
543,943 | 562,732 | 354,623 | 4 | I figured it out ! | Hey you wanna know what I hate ? Lines of dialogue like this : " You been away from the dark realm a while , Chels , how'd it feel playin ' again ? " " Just like any other ultra-violent twenty-four hour wildly popular and yet utterly purposeless embraced-by-the-masses Internet role-playing game . " It's one of those lines of dialogue that they always put into movies like Hellraiser 8 that are impossible to avoid sounding like they were written and re-written and rehearsed and re - rehearsed and then finally they just give up trying to make it sound natural after 30 or 40 takes and , exasperated , just drop the best bad take into the movie . That , being said , let me tell you what I have figured out . After years if deliberation about what it takes to make a good horror movie and what is missing in a bad one , after countless theories ( the presence of teenagers or college-age kids being near the top of that list , by the way ) , I have finally discovered for certain the exact point at which a movie stops being scary and good and instantly becomes stupid and bad . There is a perfect illustration of the solution near the end of this film , when Chelsea gets locked in the room and Adam starts calling to her from under the floor . She has becomes absorbed in some photo album despite having found herself locked into the creepiest attic imaginable , and she hears someone whispering her name from behind her . She spins around just in time to see a hand disappear beneath a crack in the floorboards , and she cautiously moves over to investigate . As she peers into the hole , she continues to hear her name being called and she can see the tiniest glimpse of a face in the darkness , and at this point I am absolutely cringing in my chair . No matter how sure I am that something is going to spring out in a situation like that it still gets to me . And then she did something stupid . Literally the instant Chelsea put her hand through that crack in the floorboards , I immediately relaxed , almost to the point of breathing a sigh of relief because I didn't have to worry anymore because I completely stopped caring . And it's not just because she doesn't realize she's in a horror movie ( despite the fact that the entire cast of this movie are hardcore Hellraiser fans , so the fourth wall has already been breached ) , it's because the moment her hand crosses the threshold of that crack in the boards she instantly ceases to be a victim . And you know what my analogy is ? Suicide ! When someone in a horror movie does something that stupid , it is generally because the filmmakers need to have the character killed off but can't think of a really clever way to have it happen , so they just have the character do something monumentally stupid , but the problem is that this places the blame for their death on themselves , and in a horror movie , it's not only not scary when someone is attacked after doing something as idiotic as putting her hand through the crack in the floorboards because she thinks she sees her dead friend down there , it's satisfying , and not in the good way either . Stupidity should be painful , but in the movies , it should be lethal . That being said , it's amazing how little effort was made into making it clear what exactly was going on in the movie . It starts out with the funeral of a college age kid having been killed because of his over-involvement in something called Hellworld , which itself is never very clearly explained . His friends later mourn that they all knew what was happening to him but still kept playing Hellworld , although if you watch the making-of featurettes on the DVD , Director Rick Bota refers to Hellworld as " a website , or video game . " It's kind of an ominous sign when even the director doesn't know what his movie is about . Either that or he doesn't know the difference between a website and a video game . The story follows the death of their friend , something about that game , and then cuts to a few years later when all of his friends get invited to a party celebrating the said video game . Needless to say , it's kind of like an overblown Halloween party where everyone seems to be fascinated with the macabre ( serious macabre , too , like dead babies in jars , sounds like a blast ) , and girls randomly pull their breasts out ( curiously , the first bit of wildly gratuitous nudity is followed by the following exchange ? " Gratuitous breasts ? " " Necessary breasts ! Ha ha ha ! " Clever . ) . When all is said and done and you finally realize what has been happening throughout the entire movie , it is such a ludicrous and ridiculous twist that it distantly surpasses the Saw movies for absurdity . If you thought Jigsaw had some time on his hands to come up with some incredibly complex machines of torture , wait until you see the plot that is hatched by the Host ( played by Lance Henriksen , who wastes his talent completely in this movie ) . Also don't miss the making-of featurette on the DVD , in which you can witness Pinhead eating a piece of pizza and , my favorite , Khary Payton , one of the actors in the film , makes the following mysterious analogy ? " Horror movies are like roller coasters , you know , they're not gonna win Oscars or that kind of thing , but they're just a lot of fun . " I don't know , Khary , have you ridden Xtreme at Magic Mountain in Southern California ? I see an Oscar in that ride's future ! |
544,418 | 562,732 | 99,856 | 4 | The Invisible Maniac has a respectable enough story , in the tradition of the Nutty Professor , but it makes up for the bad acting and directing by throwing in numbing amounts of gratuitous nudity . | Take one look at the cover of this movie , and you know right away that you are not about to watch a landmark film . This is cheese filmmaking in every respect , but it does have its moments . Despite the look of utter trash that the movie gives , the story is actually interesting at some points , although it is undeniably pulled along mainly by the cheerleading squads ' shower scenes and sex scenes with numerous personality-free boyfriends . The acting is awful and the director did little more than point and shoot , which is why the extensive amount of nudity was needed to keep the audience's attention . In The Nutty Professor , a hopelessly geeky professor discovers a potion that can turn him into a cool and stylish womanizer , whereas in The Invisible Maniac , a mentally damaged professor discovers a potion that can make him invisible , allowing him to spy on ( and kill , for some reason ) his students . Boring fodder . Don't expect any kind of mental stimulation from this , and prepare yourself for shrill and enormously overdone maniacal laughter which gets real annoying real quick . . . |
544,738 | 562,732 | 117,420 | 4 | Sadly , the goofy melodrama and the exotic martial arts just don't mix ? | In Van Damme's directorial debut , he stars as Chris Dubois , a New York City orphan who stows away aboard a ship on it's way to Asia to escape a life on the edge of society , only to be captured and sold quite literally into slavery . There's even a part where he is asking a shady character played by Roger Moore called Lord Edgar Dobbs ( " Dobbs , Lord Dobbs ? " ) to " buy him " so he can have a chance to go to a mysterious place called the Lost City to enter an ultra-secret fighting championship and win his freedom and maybe a little glory along the way . Sadly , the plot is one of the weakest I've seen in a Van Damme movie , which is not a good thing . The first hour comes across as almost an excuse just to get to the fight scenes at the end , which resemble some of his earliest fighting movie like Bloodsport and Kickboxer , but here are so brief and watered down that they are meaningless . It would be better if they just described them . But I'll get to that later . Clearly , Chris ' motivation is to get his freedom , but there is also the matter of this fighting tournament , which is a little difficult to understand . The best fighters from all of a dozen or more different countries are there to find out who is the best in the world . It's sort of like the Olympics for fighting with all those nations represented , except it's super-secret so there is no publicity and no recognition for their achievements . One journalist is there , but she had to pull a serious amount of strings in order to get there . These must be fighting purists , the guys that do it for the spiritual reasons and not the money or fame . Anyway , this Lord Dobbs becomes interested when Chris explains to him that the prize for winning the tournament is " a big dragon made of solid gold , " so Chris is able to enlist his help in getting to the tournament , provided he can win his freedom if he shares the prize with him . All of this is generally irrelevant , of course . The movie exists just for the fight scenes , but sadly , once they finally get started it quickly becomes one of the most disappointing parts of the whole movie . The tournament takes place somewhere called the " Lost City , " which is described as " the top of the world . " Maybe this is meant to evoke something like Lhasa , the capital city of Tibet , which calls itself " the roof of the world . " There's no resemblance , but it's an interesting coincidence . Anyway , soon we learn that there is more to risk than getting the tar beaten out of you . One of the fight officials ominously warns Chris that , if he loses , he can never leave the Lost City . How's that again ? Such stipulations are always a complete mystery to me . When I was in Tibet last summer , we took a trip to Namtso Lake a couple hours north of Lhasa , which claims to be the " highest lake in the world " at about 5200 meters ( I'm pretty sure that there are dozens that are much , much higher , but no matter ) , the locals at the lake told us that the lake was sacred to them , so if you bathe in it , or even just wash your face or hands or feet , your punishment will be that they'll never let you leave . Uh-huh . Who would they really be punishing ? Anyway , the actual tournament looks like a video game , a cartoonishly overblown ceremonial setup that reminds me of Mortal Kombat , which I understand is one of Van Damme's worst movies ever . I haven't seen it , but I can certainly imagine ! Each country is represented by a goofy stereotype , often in wildly inappropriate attire . There is the German fighter who looks exactly like a Nazi , complete with calf-high standard issue military work boots , the Japanese sumo-wrestler , the squirrelly Chinese guy , the mountainous , frightening Mongolian ( who doesn't look remotely Mongolian , but no matter ) , etc . What I especially love is that every fighter comes out , does some bizarre dance , and then the fight begins and ends within 10-15 seconds without fail . The Turkish fighter , who looks like one of the toughest fighters of all of them , gets shoved backwards by the sumo-wrestler and then I guess he just passes out . I've never seen anyone get knocked out from being pushed , but it happens in this movie . Anyway , things get strangely familiar again when Chris takes off the headband of a fallen friend , swearing revenge with an evil stare at the scary Mongolian . This is as goofy as it gets , but for some reason it's still fun to watch Van Damme in this kind of situation . Too bad the rest of the movie is so bad . What I mean by that , of course , is things like the conclusion of the movie , where Lord Dobbs and his hapless sidekick attempt to steal the golden horse , which has cleverly been left out in the middle of an open courtyard during the tournament , with so little security that no one notices when they try to steal it using a BLIMP . You see , they figure it's too heavy for anyone to carry off , which renders even the most conspicuous and noticeable vehicle perfectly acceptable . NICE . The end of the movie is abrupt and cheesy , complete with a ham-handed moral and a totally uncreative mention of the future of the cast . At least Lord Dobbs mentions that he's a pirate , but used to be a captain in the Royal Navy . Interesting because that's what most pirates were in real life before they turned to a life of crime . Sadly , there's not much else here . For some good Van Damage you're better off with the earlier kickboxing films ? |
544,203 | 562,732 | 1,104,006 | 4 | Yeah , I felt a little walled in myself ? | Walled In is the kind of horror film that sets itself up in a bizarre location and then explains all kinds of bizarre rules to make the scariness work . The movie opens with a series of headlines that explain the terrible discovery of 16 bodies cemented into the walls of a building , including that of the architect who designed it . We learn that the person who walled them in , Joseph Malestrazza , was never caught , and then we cut to 15 years later , when the building is planned to be demolished . Mischa Barton stars as Samantha , a young member of the demolition company family , perfectly named the Walczak's ( the ' c ' is silent ) . She recently graduated from engineering school and it becomes her first lone assignment to visit the building and supervise its demolition . It's a perfect set-up for a horror movie , I suppose , although as soon as we get to the building , the one where the 16 bodies were discovered , you remember , and learn that the wife and son of the murdered architect are still living there , the movie takes a pretty serious turn for the worse . I would think that if a man suffered the terrible fate of being murdered and cemented into the walls of a building , his wife would take it upon herself not to raise their son for his entire life in that building . But that's me . Upon her arrival we meet the woman living there and her creepy son , who explains things to Samantha that the lights go off every six minutes to conserve energy , she shouldn't go to the 8th floor ( that's Malestrazza's quarters , you see , and it's never cleaned ) , and whatever you do don't go on the roof ! I would think that someone planning the demolition of a building would explain the logical deficiency of avoiding certain parts of it , but we understand that this is a horror movie and these goofy rules he's explaining are a set-up for freaky sequences that are to follow . There's also the issue of a few remaining people who lived in the building and who are not likely to appreciate Sam arriving to destroy it . The young boy also worries that Malestrazza will be offended by her plans . I was reminded of the brilliant novel House of Leaves in a lot of things about the movie . Sam discovers enormous discrepancies between the blueprints and the actual measurements of the house , which in that book led to a fascinating and frightening series of events , but in the movie leads to the cheap and utterly witless third act . There is also a lot of throwbacks to Psycho in the relationship between the young boy and his mother in an isolated location . Sam even describes the building as being " like the Bates Motel , only bigger , " and at one point the mother forbids her son to go near Sam , telling him that Sa could never take care of him the way she does . Creepy . Ultimately we learn about an " ancient architectural belief " that provides the reason that Malestrazza killed people and walled them into his buildings ( and also the reason why not one of the 27 buildings that Malestrazza built have ever been torn down ) . It gives the movie the feel of something with more thought in it that it actually has . I felt a little flicker of interest when this was revealed , but in retrospect it strikes me as little more than a screenwriters brainstorm . I understand that Walled In is based on a novel , and I hope the novel is better than the movie . Books , especially horror books , are always better than the movie , ad if someone read the book and thought it was good enough to make into a film , it must have been better than this movie , because it has all the sign-posts of a weak horror film . It's full to the brim with cheap scares ( notice the Screeching Cat Scare , which at least was made a little bit different but essentially is the same old thing , and my favorite , a scary rose scare . You have to see that one to believe it ) and blatantly rips off a whole series of other horror movies . I'm curious what the movie would have looked like had director Gilles Paquet-Brenner never seen Psycho , Texas Chainsaw , and the Nightmare on Elm Street films . He even uses that " One , Two , Freddy's Coming For You " song several times . Real creative there , buddy . I won't go into the details of the end of the film partly because I don't want to ruin it for you but mostly because it's so dumb that I don't want to bother spending my time explaining it . I will tell you one thing though . There's a particularly amusing scene where the boy accuses Samantha of thinking that he's nothing but a " crazy little boy . " You gotta see this scene , man , it's hilarious . At the time that he says that to her , I won't tell you what he happens to be doing , but when you make a statement like that , it's generally not a good time to be acting like a crazy little boy . What follows that scene is a third act that is not entirely without effect , but definitely one of the dumbest situations that I've seen in a horror movie in some years . It is so bizarre and makes so little sense that the movie almost becomes a mystery . Another mystery is why the thing got made in the first place , but sadly , after seeing the movie , I don't think I'm every going to be able to bring myself to read the book ? |
543,874 | 562,732 | 443,496 | 4 | Gritty and raw and surreal and turgid and abrasive and ultimately pointless . | It's odd that I don't feel like I know much more about this movie now than before I just watched it . I knew that William H . Macy played a character that went a little mad , as they say , and that there was a substantial amount of nudity and violence , and now that it's over , I can still say about that much about the movie . I guess there isn't much more to say . It is associated with David Mamet , it is based on a stage play that was doubtless far superior to the movie , and it includes copious and gratuitous amounts of violence which wouldn't be copious and gratuitous if the senseless philosophical tirades which attempt in vain to justify it didn't so completely fail . I suppose that with enough effort you could impose meaning and significance onto what the movie is trying to say about society and class and marriage and racism and crime , but the film is so ineptly constructed that it comes across as a series of bizarre skits , the collective meaning of which I imagine is intended to point to some larger truth . Unfortunately , you might miss that truth while Macy is screaming it into the face of Julia Stiles , most likely because you are still trying to figure out why this beautiful young woman was still so fascinated with this creepy older man , even when he started waving around his double-edged knife / brass knuckles and unleashed a stream of profanity and racial slurs . Maybe if you like that kind of guy you'll like this kind of movie . It won't treat you much better . . . . |
544,067 | 562,732 | 109,676 | 4 | A relatively interesting story , but awful special effects and some awkward acting reduce Drop Zone to lower shelf material . | Wesley Snipes didn't do much in the acting department here , but at least Drop Zone isn't as bad as Demolition Man , probably his worst role ever , followed closely by Blade . Although not exactly original , the scene where the federal witness is kidnapped from an airplane in mid-flight is pretty well-done , however improbable , and it leads into a fairly interesting story involving Gary Busey back in the bad guy type of role that he plays best and , ironically enough , he steals the show . There are two main problems with Drop Zone , one of them is Wesley Snipes , and the other one is the badly screwed up skydiving scenes . Snipes delivers an awful performance in a role strikingly similar to Keanu Reeves ' role in Point Break . Look for example , at his goofy antics after his first jump . This is just dumb acting , and it really takes a lot away from what might otherwise have been a much better film . . However , if this film was to be of any quality at all , there had to be a complete overhaul and reconstruction of the idiotic skydiving scenes . There were quite a few scenes that contained actual footage of skydiving , but there were falsified close-ups edited into those scenes that completely ruined them as a whole . As a novice skydiver myself , these half-assed attempts at re-creating the mind-blowing reality of skydiving were very disturbing because they were so unrealistic . Besides that , some of the smart-ass stunts were even worse . For example , early in the film when Jessie drops Snipes through a trapdoor in the bottom of the plane without a parachute ( she didn't like him at the beginning ) , the pilot makes a comment to her about how she wouldn't normally do something like that ( if I remember correctly ) , she says something back , and then finally jumps out after him , catches up to him , secures him to her , opens her parachute , and they skydive safely the rest of the way to the ground . This is just total nonsense , and I hate seeing total nonsense in movies . In order to make airborne contact with another skydiver in the air , particularly before opening your chute , you literally have to jump out of the plane right on top of that person . If you wait more than about 2 seconds after they jump , they're already so far away and so lost in the tremendous sky that you won't even be able to see them again until after that person opens their chute . Keep in mind that when you jump out of a plane the sky is all around you , not just above you , and you're moving at high speed , so it's extremely difficult not to lose someone up there . Besides that , about 2 seconds after jumping from the plane , you can no longer tell which direction the plane was traveling , so you don't know which direction is backward , making it even more difficult to locate someone who jumped before you . In real life , that cute little stunt she pulled to give him a little scare would have meant certain death for him . The botched production of the skydiving element of this film was a huge disappointment , which is significant , given the name of the movie . On the other hand , it had a pretty interesting crime story that provided for some good action , and thank God Gary Busey was in this , because he really saved the movie from being a total loss . But I guess if you've never gone skydiving yourself , you probably won't notice all of those screw-ups as much as I did . |
544,543 | 562,732 | 83,972 | 4 | What's this about 3D ? | So I've heard that this is the Friday the 13th installment that was released in 3D . I wish I could have seen it in that version , because it would probably have made it a lot more interesting . I imagine the makers decided to add that little bit of cinematic trickery to create another surge of interest in the series , which really hasn't done anything new by the time the second sequel came out to add on to the original idea . I've been going back and re-watching all the old classics , I'm working on the Nightmare on Elm Streets and the Friday the 13th films right now , and in comparison it's amazing how much more callous and brutal the Friday the 13th films are , while the Nightmare on Elm Street films , while equally campy , I tend to find much more entertaining and well-made ( not that that's saying much . ) . Watch , for example , A Nightmare on Elm Street 2 , and then watch just about any Friday the 13th movie , and you can see what I mean right away . The Elm Street films are peppered with low-brow and goofy ( although quite often effective , even when it's not really meant to be funny ) comic relief , butthe Friday the 13th films ( especially part 3 , I've noticed so far ) are little more than strings of scenes of teenagers doing teenage things at Camp Crystal Lake and getting brutally murdered by the relentless Jason Voorhees . Friday the 13th Part 3 concerns yet another crowd of idiot teens who go out to Camp Crystal Lake , bypass yet another ominous warning from a crazy old man along the way , and proceed to engage in a lot of the exact same antics that we saw in the first two movies . There's the addition here of a hopelessly geeky kid with them who have an annoying habit of faking his own bloody death in order to scare all the girls ( after which he wonders why none of them like him ) , but at least providing the only bit of mystery in the entire film . As I watched the movie , my roommates and I were betting on whether he would get killed , then someone wouldn't believe him and then get killed themselves , or if someone else would get killed , he would think they were trying to get revenge for his bad jokes , and then he would get killed for real . Kind of sad when the only thing that it really interesting in a movie like this is in what order the teens will get killed . That strikes me as a definite sign that the movies are starting to lose their thrill ( either because of the 20 years between the film's release and now or because each sequel really does nothing new ) . I wonder if the 3D element really did add that extra needed bit of excitement . One thing that was really funny was the motorcycle gang . These people were awesome . Seriously . On their way to the Lake , the kids stop at a store to get some junk food essentials , and are confronted by what I assume was supposed to be a hardened gang of bikers . These people were HILARIOUS . After harassing the kids in the store , the geeky kid accidentally backs the VW Bug into their motorcycles , knocking them over . The lead biker responds by calmly walking up to the car , smiling brightly at him , and then smashing the windshield and the driver's side window . Angered beyond ability to just leave , the kid decides to circle around and run over the bikes head-on , which he succeeds in doing because the aforementioned biker couldn't KICKSTART his motorcycle in time . Maybe had the poor biker realized that street bikes don't kickstart but are started with a key and an ignition button , he would have been able to save his pimp ride . He and his friends might even have avoided their fate as pointless fodder for Jason to slice and dice later in the movie . Ah well . So there was certainly no shortage of comic relief , and I really don't think it matters that the comedy in these movies wasn't originally meant to be comedy . At least they're still entertaining . The thing that really drags the movie down is that it is literally nothing more than a flimsy clothesline of a plot that is punctuated by gruesome killings of idiot teenagers . There's only so many movies that you can make about a lot of kids who decide to do something dangerous by going out to the haunted lake to taunt the legend of Jason Voorhees and then not realize that he's really there killing them all one by one until only one is left , and even then she hits him with a shovel or stabs him in the thigh and then starts clawing at locked doors , not thinking to maybe make a little more certain that Jason's not going to get back up . You would think that at least ONE of these last victims would realize that the best time to get the best of Jason is when he's lying unconscious at her feet . But no . The second sequel of the Friday the 13th saga is little more than a rehash of the old Camp Crystal Lake legend , and given the proliferation of sequels that followed , hopefully something new comes up later . Given the final scene , I would really like to see a character in a later movie throw out some jokes about Jason's mom . Can you imagine ? How cool would it be to see some bonehead teenager laughing his head off around the campfire or something as all of his friends look at him in horror because Jason is approaching him from behind with a gigantic butcher knife as the kid says , ' Hey Jason , yo momma's so ugly , she won't even come out of the lake ! HAW HAW HAW ! ! ! ' |
544,410 | 562,732 | 469,641 | 4 | The worst terrorist attack in Hollywood history . | It seems that Oliver Stone's patriotism is too much for him to objectively helm a story like World Trade Center , which focuses on two firefighters trapped in the rubble of the twin towers after the September 11th attacks . The problem with the movie is that it is simultaneously trying to be a memorial to those killed in the attacks ( and particularly honor the bravery of the firefighters ) and still retain some realism . As a memorial it is successful , although pretty cloying at times , but the realism fails completely . If , in fact , there was any intention towards realism at all . In the latter point , it may very well be that Stone was not going for realism . I am no expert on the logistics of collapsing buildings , but I have read extensively on the subject of the attacks , as I imagine most Americans have , and I've seen a lot of pictures as Ground Zero was being cleared of the bottom floors of the towers . In one picture , I remember seeing a messy wall of material that looked as solid as a rock which was about 10-12 feet high , which was described as 15-20 floors compressed together . The idea that two firefighters are caught underneath the 100 + floors of collapsing towers is laughable , and this , my friends , is not a comedy . Then again , I think the focus of the film is on the breed of suffering and heroism involved in the rescue efforts just after the attacks , and the plight of the firefighters ' families and their loved husbands and fathers and brothers and sons rushed off into what looked so much like certain death . This is the most heroic thing that many Americans have ever seen , certainly for me . And while the film succeeds at telling these stories and at moving the audience ( really , the 9-11 attacks are so engrained in the American mind that it's impossible not to be moved ) , although it is definitely guilty of trumping up the Hollywood bravado to an almost unbearable degree at times . Because of this , a lot of the movie comes across as contrived , which is too bad , because when you watch something as important to America as this , you don't want to ever feel like you're looking at a sound stage , you don't ever want to feel like you can sense the crew standing just a few feet away from the action on screen , sipping nonfat caramel macchiattoes and flipping through the latest shooting script , wondering if they can squeeze in any more heroic one liners . But you can here . A lot . There has been some talk about the irony of Oliver Stone , not exactly popular with the conservative crowd , making a film that is described by many right-wingers as the most " pro - American , pro-family , pro-faith , pro-male , flag-waving , God Bless America films you will ever see . " It also mentions a connection between the attacks to the war in Iraq . I had been under the impression that such a connection had long since been discredited , but no matter . It is a difficult situation that the two main characters are trapped and almost completely unable to move for about half the movie , and it's unfortunate that , to keep the action moving , we see some of those deadpan emotional flashbacks of the guys with their wives and kids , which just strikes me as something that should never be in a film like this , if only because it is such weak screen writing . Remember that slow motion scene in Top Gun showing Goose with his wife and kid ? They may as well add a subtitle saying he's gonna die soon . There is another film about the 9-11 attacks , United 93 , which is vastly superior to this one . It has been criticized for having too little emotion which , interestingly , is exactly what this movie needed . The emotions involved with the September 11th attacks are strong and universal , we don't need a movie to hold our hand and lead us through them . United 93 succeeded because it presented the facts in an almost documentary style , allowing the audience to feel their own emotions . Not this movie , and it's too bad . There is one rather bizarre looking character , Dave Karnes ( based on a real man ) , who saw the attacks on TV and immediately knew that the country was at war . He rushed to Ground Zero and managed to help the two heroes escape from the rubble , and then the film closes with a title card that mentions that he went on to serve two tours of duty in Iraq . Nothing is mentioned about the fact that Iraq was not involved in the attacks , but the focus is on the patriotism , not fighting the right battle . Stone has been justifiably criticized for this connection , similar to the conspiracy theories that he presented in JFK . I'm normally a big fan , but this goes down as one of the great many movies that SHOULD have been a great , important American film , and just isn't . |
544,325 | 562,732 | 901,476 | 4 | Here come the brides ? | It was because of circumstances beyond my control that I was dragged in to watch Bride Wars in the first place , and while I can't avoid admitting that I was truly , truly suffering for the first 30 minutes , I would be lying if I said the film is devoid of laughs . By that , of course , I mean that I did laugh out loud once or twice , briefly , and I was even pleasantly surprised by a mildly unexpected plot development late in the movie . But don't worry , everything else goes strictly by the age-old wedding movie formula . Anne Hathaway and Kate Hudson play Emma and Liv , two twentysomethings who have been inseparable best friends since childhood . They have always shared everything , their triumphs , their failures , their emotions , their struggles , their hopes , and of course , their dream of getting married in exactly the same place , the luxurious Plaza Hotel ( yes , it's a hotel ) . Much effort is put forth to get us to understand how close this friendship is , but in their efforts to get themselves engaged , a deep streak of competitiveness is revealed in both of them . Particularly Liv , who doesn't know better than to go jogging into her boyfriend's office and , dripping sweat , blurt out some nonsense about how he should propose to her . Thus is revealed the massive fallacy of logical thinking that permeates the entire movie ? ladies , I'm sorry to sound like a chauvinist or whatever , but the run-up to your wedding is not the best time to start acting like a lunatic . Just a suggestion . Not that the grooms would notice , of course , especially not in this movie . Their sole job in the movie isn't just to not notice things , but to not be noticed . They are as unimportant as the honeymoon , which is never mentioned because the girls childhood dreams never extended beyond the wedding ceremony . Maybe they just planned to head on upstairs for a June honeymoon at the Plaza , too ? Anyway , the girls get engaged within like , you know , minutes of each other , and then , due to a moronic clerical error , they accidentally get scheduled to be married at the Plaza Hotel at the exact same time on the exact same day . And henceforth , ladies and gentlemen , it's war . First of all , I will say that I have a tough time relating to this belligerent scramble to get married absolutely as soon as humanly possible , but that may simply be because I'm a guy . And if you take nothing else from this review , understand this , Bride Wars is NOT a movie made with the male audience in mind . But I'm willing to accept it , at least as an offshoot of the unspoken jealousy that seems to be finally emerging between them . You see , Liv has enjoyed some success as a lawyer while Emma is an underpaid schoolteacher , and ultimately Liv's sense of entitlement combined with Emma's decision that she's just not gonna take it anymore set up the escalating conflict that takes up the rest of the movie , but from here there's nowhere else to go except down the well-trodden path of half-assed romantic comedies . The biggest problem with the movie is that it tries to get us to laugh as we sit bewildered at how these life-long friends came to such childish blows as viciously sabotaging each other's dreams for reasons of such astonishing selfishness that not only their own grooms really factor into their heads . In fact , I'm surprised the movie didn't get an R rating for all the violence ! Blue hair ! Orange spray-on tans ! Beware , this stuff is not for the squeamish ! Of course , my favorite one was where Emma sends Liv enormous daily gift baskets consisting mainly of chocolates and cookies and , you know , butter ( actual quote : " You mean you sat around eating sticks of butter from all over the world ? " ) , because Emma was hoping she would gain enough weight to where she wouldn't be able to fit into her Vera Wang dress ( for those of you who don't know Vera Wangs are supposed to be like , super super tight for some reason , and thus insanely expensive ) . Of course the plan succeeds , but the movie never really lets us know if it was the candy that made her gain weight or the sheer quantity of stupidity inside her that would be necessary for her not to figure out what was going on . But I will tell you this . Something happens involving one of the weddings that may even qualify as more than mildly surprising , because you just don't see this kind of thing in this kind of movie anymore . You'll know what I mean , it's the part just before Liv and Emma forget about their months of hatred toward each other as they lay amidst the ruins of both of their weddings surrounded by the surely disgusted families . Oh , yeah , they're best friends at the end . Is that a spoiler ? I don't think so . Maybe . But if you can see a movie poster like this one and not immediately see the arc of the story , well then , you have bigger problems than some guy online ruining the end of a bad comedy . Besides , wouldn't it be more dishonest if I allowed you to spend your time and money watching this thing without knowing what you were getting into ? In a situation like this , just trust me , it's better for you to be warned about the movie than to be warned about spoilers about the movie . |
544,596 | 562,732 | 283,632 | 4 | In case of emergency , PLEASE USE THE STAIRS . | ( spoilers herein ) The basic plot of They involves three characters who delve into the world of nocturnal , computer-generated monsters , whose behavior is conveniently explained through their friend's journal , which they carry with them like some sort of talisman against being killed by these things . The basic premise leading to the ' scary ' part of the movie is the fact that darkness evidently opens up some sort of portal between our world and their world , whatever that world may be . I like that the movie taps into the uproar surrounding the rolling blackouts that were going on around the time that the movie was released . Unfortunately , as in real life , the rolling blackouts are quickly forgotten in the movie and , very soon , the scariness behind the story expires . The main character , Julia , is a psychology student ( very fitting , as we soon find out ) preparing to deliver her thesis when a friend chooses that as the best time to reveal to her that unseen creatures are coming to kill him , and then they'll be after her , too . He informs her that she's next , her childhood night terrors return , and thus the formula has been administered . The creatures to which the title refers are never revealed very clearly , and I'm actually not really sure if we're supposed to just see blurs of their true forms or if they are really just shaped like inkblots or something , but the important thing is that they're supposed to be big and mean and scary . Sadly , they're not . They're big and mean , yes , but that third characteristic is really rather important in this genre . The movie has a few redeeming moments , I suppose but the movie is peppered with simply bad scenes , scares that are such a horror cliché that they come off as completely contrived and boring , like when someone tells you the same joke for the 40th time . You get a little tired of hearing it , you know ? There are , for example , FAR too many scenes where characters wander off into the dark alone and we're supposed to grab the edge of our seats wondering what in the world is going to happen to them . There's a scene , for example , where Julia leaves the safety of her boyfriend's house and heads straight for a deserted subway station in the middle of the night . Brilliant . Wasn't she paying attention to her friend when he told her the creatures were coming for her ? Has she been daydreaming through the whole movie so far ? This lack of creativity is actually partially justified later in the film , when it turns out that everything could be happening just in her head ( hence the relevance of her being a student of psychology ) . The reason the creatures never ate her or anything was because , apparently , she had been imagining them , so to speak . Although , to be fair , he conjuring of these things was a result of slightly more than imagination . I think it was something more along the lines of paranoid schizophrenia , but that raises yet another problem . The ending presents her fear partly as a result of an ability to conceptualize perfectly normal life , which is not true of paranoid schizophrenia . One of the old adages is that people with true , serious mental illnesses like paranoid schizophrenia are not aware that anything is wrong ( this is even pointed out in a Megadeth song , with the lyrics " If I know I'm going crazy , I must not be insane " ) . Multiple personalities are not aware of each other , for example . Madness is loosely defined as doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result . In the movie , Julia is very aware of what is going wrong and very aware of the safe world that she is trying to return to . The storyline is hardly original , obviously , but given the ham-handed and uncreative insertion of mental illness into the story , the ending is made even worse than you might have thought while sitting through this thing . Since everything is in Julia's head , she's left to be , I don't know , eternally knocked down by hideous beasts that never seem to do her any real harm . That could possibly simply be the state of her madness , but that leads to a depth beyond what should really be expected from a PG-13 horror film . An alternate ending puts the entire film inside her head , with everyone else in the film simply being other patients in the hospital , and she has created this world involving them . The subtitles in this ending are simply weak writing though , and I suspect are the reason that this ending is alternate . They is a film that routinely reflects the creativeness of its title , plodding through every horror movie cliché in the book and spouting cheap scares between every scene . The movie is ironically more famous for being meaninglessly connected to Wes Craven than it is for anything that happens in it , which is a bad sign for the movie and a bad sign for Wes . I've read a lot about the movie and have yet to come across any reason for why the alternate title is ' Wes Craven Presents : They , ' other than a mention that the theatrical release generated disappointing box office numbers , so they connected his name to increase interest in the movie . Sadly , what little interest it gained was from people who watched the movie and wondered at how a horror veteran like Wes Craven would have willingly attached his name to this . That's like Bill Gates ' presenting ' a box that some kid threw together and called a computer . |
544,873 | 562,732 | 191,754 | 4 | Sandra Bullock comes forth with a relatively good performance that is wasted in a boring and routine rehab drama . | The rehab drama has virtually been done to death , and while 28 Days was an honest effort and it succeeded in some areas , as a whole it was the same old thing . Girl , Interrupted was pushing it enough barely a year ago , and to have another of virtually the exact same movie come out already is just too much . Besides that , you have to consider the fact that the only really good movie of this kind ever made was One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest , and that was 25 years ago . The unlikely events that lead up to Gwen's ( Bullock ) arrest and sentencing to a rehab clinic were farfetched to say the least . Anyone who casually decides to borrow a limousine while falling-down drunk after having fallen through her sister's wedding cake would never have made it to that age without winding up in prison for a serious alcohol-related felony . Instead , it's like Gwen was dropped onto the Earth in her present state and began tripping all over herself trying to learn the rules of the society that she suddenly found herself in . The romance that she develops with Eddie ( Viggo Mortensen ) and the one that falls apart with her intensely alcoholic previous boyfriend together make up the element that is in virtually every single movie of this kind . This was probably the least original part of the entire film , as well as one of the most boring . However , Steve Buscemi was very entertaining as one of the counselors at the rehab clinic ( although this was a very uncharacteristic performance for him ? remember The Wedding Singer ? How about Armageddon and Desperado ? ) . As a whole , 28 Days is predictable , routine , fairly boring , and ultimately disappointing . I didn't expect much from this movie because it deals with a very sensitive subject , so obviously it can't be much of a comedy , and there is little left to be done in the area of the rehab drama , so even though drama is the only thing it can really be , chances are that it will just rehash something that has been done many times before . And unfortunately , this is what it did . Although Sandra Bullock delivered a pretty good performance as someone who suddenly awakens to the pathetic life that she has been leading , she was totally unconvincing as the drunken partygoer that she tried to portray in the first part of the film . Die-hard Sandra Bullock fans ( and I've heard that they do , in fact , exist ) are sure to have a blast . Everyone else might do better to go straight for the ' 75 classic , One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest . |
544,335 | 562,732 | 296,780 | 4 | Another making-of documentary that is barely about the making of . | I love watching documentaries that appear as special features on DVDs because they almost invariably make me appreciate the movies more . Unfortunately , the Making of Moulin Rouge only reiterated the things that I really disliked about the movie . When the movie first came out , even before I saw it I was apprehensive about the fact that there was so much modern music in it , and then when I saw it my fears were realized . And not only that , but it is not until a full third of the way through the documentary that it says anything about the making of Moulin Rouge . Before that it is a repetitive plodding through the movie , telling us things that anyone who has seen it already knows . It is a period film that not only features music at the forefront of modern popular culture , but that features music by Madonna , Nirvana , even Christina Aguilera , who appears in this documentary in her full , clownish make-up talking about how excited she is about her song , which probably disrupts the flow of the movie more than any of the other immensely disruptive songs . There are various reasons given for the music used in this film , such as the fact that Director Baz Luhrmann wanted to reinvent the musical and that at the original Moulin Rouge ( the original nightclub , not the 1950 film which is not mentioned in the documentary ) the most popular music of the time was always being played , so the filmmakers wanted modern audiences to relate to popular music the same way the original patrons of the nightclub did . Director Baz Lurhman wanted to take the genre and re-invent it , but messing with time is simply not the way to do it . The problem is that this is a comparison of apples and oranges . You can't ask modern audiences to relate to a 100-year-old nightclub the same way that its original patrons did by playing modern popular music . The way to do that would have been to play the music that was popular at the time . Since so much went into creating the Paris of 1900 , it would seem to me to have a matter of basic , basic logic that the music of the time be used as well . This documentary admits that Moulin Rouge constantly reminds you that you're watching a movie , which is one true thing , but it's the one thing that I don't want to be reminded of when watching a movie , especially a period film . Ever since I wrote my original review of Moulin Rouge , I have been told by friends and by various people who read it that I was being too hard on the movie just about the music , but even after watching this documentary I don't feel that I was too harsh in the least , because the music is an absolute disaster in a movie like this , with the exception of the one original song , which I believe was called Come What May . Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman deserve massive praise for their incredible singing performances , but the choice of music was simply catastrophic . I am always wary of making-of documentaries that feature a significant amount of footage from the film itself , which I think should only ever be put in to illustrate a point being made about how a certain scene or sequence was made . The beginning of this documentary goes into great detail about what the movie is about , who the characters are , what the theme of the movie is , etc . while showing extensive accompanying footage from the film . This is not how a making-of documentary should run , this is an 8 minute trailer for the film . One IMDb user complained that the end of the movie was a self-serving advertisement for Strictly Ballroom and Romeo & Juliet . A more valid concern is that the first third of the documentary is a self-serving advertisement for Moulin Rouge , which is wildly unnecessary because we're already watching Disc 2 of the collector's DVD . At one point in this documentary the claim is made that Moulin Rouge holds the record for " the longest special effects shot in cinematic history this week . " What in the world is that supposed to mean ? Is it the longest special effects shot in cinematic history or is it the longest special effects shot filmed that week ? I doubt very much , after all , that the guy making this claim didn't realize that cinematic history preceded that week . Sadly , this is one of the more interesting things presented in the sub-par documentary . The actress who played one of the dancers , I think her name was something charming like Nini Legs in the Air , described the Roxanne dance as being " so sexy that it starts with two people and just grows . " I'm not sure exactly what she meant by that , but I did find it odd that she described it that way , if only because I found the phlegmy , guttural rendition of the song to be so distasteful that I wanted to walk out of the theater until it was over . It's no surprise that the people that appear in the film heap praise upon each other , because I doubt that a documentary has ever accompanied a movie on a DVD in which the cast and crew did anything but heap praise on each other , and I'm wondering when these descriptions will fall flat as monumental clichés . Will it ever sound tiresome , for example , to hear an actor describe a director as an original , a great storyteller , understanding pop culture better than anybody I've ever seen , a great showman , an unstoppable genius ? It can't be denied that Moulin Rouge is a tremendous work of art , but the music alone stopped it from becoming as truly great as it could have and should have been , Sadly , this documentary does nothing to dispel that unfortunate fact . |
544,807 | 562,732 | 383,216 | 4 | Thrilling story of Murder , Corruption , and ? Beyonce ? | There is little use in comparing Steve Martin's Pink Panther to Peter Sellers ' character , introduced to the live-action movie world in 1963 . The 2006 version is based only loosely on the original films , it's more of an update on the series , a sort of modern remake in the form of a prequel , and starring one of today's best movie comedians . It's a relief to see that Steve Martin doesn't try to imitate Peter Sellers in his performance , because Martin himself is a bigger actor than the part of Inspector Clouseau , and indeed at times he seems like he's playing down to the character . The movie takes place before the original 1963 film , with Inspector Clouseau chosen from his obscure position by the Chief Inspector of the French Police , Inspector Dreyfus ( Kevin Kline ) to investigate the incredibly daring murder of the French soccer team's coach and the theft of the massive Pink Panther diamond . It was a highly publicized crime , having taken place at the moment of victory in the nationally televised soccer game against China ( during which not a single Chinese player could be seen anywhere on the field ) , so Dreyfus is under massive public scrutiny in his investigation . His plan ? choose the most incompetent Inspector he can find , a village idiot , if you will , and assign him to the case . As he stumbles about his investigation , unwittingly making a fool of himself before the nation's TV cameras , Dreyfus will be conducting the real investigation . When he succeeds , he can shame Clouseau publicly while taking credit for solving the case himself . Sounds like a fun guy ! I have to admit that I was a little put off by pretty much all of the ingredients in the movie . I can easily imagine a lot of French discontent ( among others ) about a lot of American actors in a film as French as this one , although it's true that as a parody it does have it's amusing moments . Characters that are centered around goofy accents get real old real quick , and Martin's massacre of the French language isn't really any exception . There isn't one funny moment that I can think of , although I did grin a couple times . Worst of all for me was Beyonce . As far as the movie being peppered with American actors , I don't have a real problem with that , because it's pretty clear that they are all having a lot of fun with their roles , and I have to admit that it's not hard to have fun along with them . But they are all in the movie and very deeply in character . Even European actor Jean Reno , who has one of the only serious roles in the movie , is playing a character . Beyonce , on the other hand , stars as herself , and even gives a stage performance as herself . Unfortunately , Beyonce does nothing for me , in movies or music or tabloids or anything else . She is wildly out of place in this movie , even though the script calls for the murdered French soccer coach to be dating a pop star who will fall under suspicion for his murder . She makes no effort to ever be anything other than herself in the movie , and she ultimately comes off as little more than a distraction from the rest of the movie . I suppose if I was more into her music I might have appreciated her presence here more , but on the other hand it seems that her fans would , during her performance scene , forget that they were even watching a comedy and just watch it like a concert video . Martin's Clouseau is sufficiently incompetent , but his Mr . Magoo-ish clumsiness and overwhelming ability to screw up any situation imaginable wears thin a little too fast . It will not be far into the movie that you can just see screenwriter's sitting around trying to think of what stupid thing he can do next . Not everything is unamusing , of course . There is a scene involving a giant globe that Clouseau accidentally sends clanking down the stairs and down the street that got me pretty good . I don't know what it is , but something about someone absent-mindedly fiddling with something and all but destroying it never fails to amuse me ( see the scene in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation where Clark's cousin Eddie tries to spin the propellers on one of Clark's Christmas decorations ) . Also , the recurring motifs of French bicyclists being in the wrong place at the wrong time has some good moments , if not the most clever ones . They are the comedy equivalent of the screeching cat scare , but they are not unwelcome . Unfortunately , the main reason that the cheap slapstick laughs are not unwelcome is because so much of the rest of the comedy in the movie is undeniably stale . It's a slapstick comedy with a cast of actors that are better than the material , which is why it's so hard to accept Steve Martin , a clearly talented and intelligent comedian , as Inspector Clouseau , who is a moron of tremendous caliber . There is an amusing appearance of Clive Owen as 006 ( in a scene that would have taken on a whole new meaning had Owen been selected to replace Pierce Brosnan as the new James Bond , which sadly he wasn't ) , but the majority of the movie just seems to be packed with too many jokes that just aren't funny . |
544,538 | 562,732 | 298,814 | 4 | The biggest disaster of the year ! And I don't mean that the earth's core stopped spinning ! | The fact that The Core is a disaster movie is a little too descriptive of itself . My initial interest in seeing the movie stemmed from a piece of the preview in which the Golden Gate Bridge is destroyed , and for some reason I'm always interested in seeing movies in which major monuments are destroyed . Not that I'm interested in death and destruction , of course . Anyway , the means by which the Golden Gate ends up burning and crashing to the water below is the result of one of a great long line of massive fallacies of geologic and astronomical logic . I think that by this point , we've all heard about the fact that our air pollution is eroding the ozone layer , and that if it is completely worn away we will have no protection from the brutal direct rays of the sun . Basically you would be able to get a suntan in seconds , and if you weren't able to get out of the sun within seconds , your skin would be burning away because the ultraviolet light on your skin would have something of a similar effect as putting your arm in the microwave . Anyway , when I first heard about that years and years ago , I was maybe 9 or 10 years old and one of the majority of people who heard the story and immediately pictured a ' hole in the ozone , ' maybe the size of a dinner table or a small house or , in the worst case scenario , a parking lot or even a city block . As it turns out , this rumor had to be dispelled by the revelation that the ' hole ' was actually about the size of , you know , Arizona or something . Evidently those people involved in making The Core missed that last memo , as their ozone hole , granted one with slightly different causes , was about the size of a small parking lot , moving along nice and smoothly , roasting everything in its path . But then again , The Core is a movie about drilling to the Earth's core , in a MANNED ship , in order to plant a lot of nuclear bombs to reactivate the spin of the molten outer core and thereby save the entire planet . So logic is obviously not very high on the priority list here . That being said , let me just get to the drill bit really quick . This is one of the things that also originally inspired me to watch the movie , just because I wanted to see if they really expected us to believe that there is any drill bit on earth that can withstand the massive heat and pressure of the inside of the earth , but luckily they didn't ( although they DO expect you to believe that it's possible to believe that they can build a SHIP to do that ) . Here's where it's important to acknowledge the suspension of disbelief in the movies , because this particular film is a test of the audience's capacity for the suspension of disbelief . Personally , I was struggling a little bit . So the ' drill bit ' turns out to be a lot of lasers set up on some machine that looks like the gat that Arnold used to shoot the police cars and helicopters out of the Cyberdine building in Terminator 2 . Just a lot bigger . And apparently it has the ability not to drill through solid rock and turn it immediately to dust , as you might think , but it is actually able to turn it to NOTHING . For the first time in earth history , a means has been created to actually destroy matter , which is clear from the fact that they are able to drill instantly through solid rock ( or , for most of the trip , MOLTEN rock and metal ) and then travel through the space created . And since the matter that they drill has nowhere to go ( it can hardly blow away in the wind ) , it follows then that it is rendered nonexistent . I had little expectation of the movie as far as logic . I've heard that some pretty bad things would happen if , for some reason , any amount of oxygen ever found it's way to the superheated core of the earth , I guess I was more curious as to how far they would go , what things they would expect the audience to buy . It turns out that they went pretty far . Particularly odd were the scenes where the ship is flying through molten rock at high speeds , zooming back and forth , avoiding collision with diamonds that must have been 500 or 600 yards across and , even better , the scene where they accidentally drill into the top of a geode ( you know , one of those rocks that appear to be shells , hollow in the center , with all the crystals formed on the inside ) , fall for maybe a mile or so to the bottom of it , and then find themselves broken down and pulling manually at the crystal shards that are holding them there while molten rock drips in the hole they made at the top , threatening to bury them all if they don't get out soon enough . The movie actually does create a bit of suspense in such scenes as the badly botched space shuttle landing at the beginning of the film , the scene where one of the astronauts gets crushed near the end of the film , and the scene where Delroy Lindo finds himself in a space suit trying to save the rest of the cast by braving heat that is twice what the suit is designed to sustain ( meaning he was in a suit with an interior temperature that , if I remember correctly , would have been something like 9 , 000 degrees ) . The problem is that these scenes create suspense because , I like to think , we have a natural dislike of seeing someone killed or in extreme pain , and rather than fear for their logical deaths , we fear for them more at the hands of the writers than reality . Lindo's character , for example , in the above-mentioned scene , finds himself struggling against heat so intense that it shatters his glasses on his face , but doesn't affect his body until his mission is accomplished . Thus the rest of the movie works , creating a whole different world and a whole different set of human limits and natural laws under which the characters operate and live . Interesting , but I really think that the movie would have been a lot more thrilling and much better received had the audience not had to learn the laws of a completely separate world before understanding the real plight of the cast , which was the survive the onslaught of the writers ' ideas , a daunting task in itself , as anyone who has seen this movie can tell you since they've also experienced it , rather than survive and save the real world . |
544,632 | 562,732 | 161,083 | 4 | Hmm , that's a good question . | SPOILERS SPOILERS What's the Worst That Could Happen ? Is a film that places two hugely recognizable actors into two perfectly opposite roles and pits them against each other , but it can't come up with a good enough reason for having done this except to have them fighting over the ownership of a ring which has nothing but sentimental or superstitious value for either one of them . Danny DeVito , plays the part of Max Fairbanks , a massively wealthy businessman having financial trouble ( ' TECHNICAL procedure ' ) , and Martin Lawrence plays the part of Kevin Caffrey , an intelligent ( supposedly ) criminal who knows his way around an art gallery . While DeVito is probably one of the most charismatic actors working today ( despite the fact that he rarely plays anything but dirtbag characters ) , Lawrence , at the same time , is one of our most trying comic actors . He is a fan's actor that mainly stars in films that the audience will hate unless they were there just to see him ( such as the sad , ridiculous mess that was Big Momma's House ) . This is not the case very often , although he does work well with certain other ( generally more talented ) actors , such as the brilliant Will Smith in Bad Boys , Eddie Murphy in Life , and I even enjoyed his performance with Luke Wilson in Blue Streak ( the forthcoming sequels for two of these movies , by the way , I am very much looking forward to , despite not being much of a Lawrence fan myself ) . ( spoilers ) At any rate , DeVito and Lawrence have acting styles that are just about as different as the characters that they play in this film , which is probably why they clash so badly . At no point do they have any chemistry onscreen , even at the end of the film when Fairbanks covers for Caffrey ( but maybe this is because of the stupididty involved in this claim - since Fairbanks was in a police station accusing Caffrey of robbing his house . Is the detective not expected to notice this because he's gay ? ) . But even more than that , the movie is centered around Caffrey getting this ring back because his girlfriend gave it to him and Fairbanks wanting to keep it because he thinks it's some sort of good luck charm , a sign that his business luck is about to change . Fairbanks is ridiculously rich , and Caffrey has much bigger things to concern himself with , like the ease with which he can get his hands on enormously valuable paintings , so why should we care ? So we get a film about two guys fighting like 8 year olds over this little trinket , and even though you want to root for Caffrey for caring so much for something that his new girlfriend gave him , you at the same time desperately want the movie to avoid that hideous cliché and do something original . I suppose it does do something original with having these two grown men fighting over something so small and trivial , but it makes it impossible to care about the outcome . We don't want Fairbanks to keep the ring because it was the one thing that Caffrey really didn't steal , and we don't want Caffrey to get it back because then this would be another cheesy comedy about some dirtbag trying to impress a pretty girl , as was the case with bad comedies like Half Baked . So while Caffrey and Fairbanks are each tripping over themselves trying to become lord of the ring , we are occasionally introduced to well-known actors who play parts in the movie for reasons which even they don't seem to sure of . The most glaring appearance is from William Fichtner , who plays a homosexual detective for no other reason than to have a homosexual detective in the movie . Maybe they wanted to distract us from the idiocy in the rest of the film . Here is a hugely talented actor who is completely wasted in this moronic role , which does nothing but fit in with the goofy slapstick antics that Martin occasionally goes off into . John Leguizamo , similarly , is an enormously talented actor who is never given a chance to really shine in the movie . There is a scene where Lawrence and Leguizamo impersonate Middle Eastern businessmen to get into a building , and the way that they fake the accents is a perfect example of their talents as actors . While Leguizamo yadda yaddas pretty much the same things over and over so it's clear he's not really speaking any kind of language , he at least spoke up and had some semblance of an idea of how to fake an accent . Lawrence , on the other hand , could do nothing but mumble and grunt and groan , inspiring the audience to do much the same , both because he was so bad at what he was trying to do and because the scene as a whole was one of the worst scenes in the movie , which is no good in the first place . At the opening of the film , we are introduced to Caffrey , Lawrence's character , admiring a painting in an art gallery . An employee at the gallery approaches and tells him that the sports exhibition is next week , which reminded me of the times that Julia Roberts was kicked out of dress shops in Pretty Woman and Runaway Bride , both of which were delightful . At this early point in the film , Caffrey shows her up by identifying the painting as a fake , making us think that we are about to enjoy a movie about a black man who defies all of the stereotypes that uppity white women like this seem to have towards them . Instead , he goes into a little dance , ensuring that , from language to being a criminal , not a single stereotype is going to be challenged here . Pretty much from this point on , the movie goes precipitously downhill . |
544,711 | 562,732 | 353,489 | 5 | No , Brigitte snaps . Ginger's dead . | Ginger Snaps 2 starts off with Brigitte landing herself in a rehab clinic after she is discovered overdosing on the poisonous drug that she has to take in order to prevent herself from turning into a werewolf like her sister . As is to be expected , the guy who finds her lapsing into unconsciousness immediately concludes that she's overdosing on heroin and takes her to a hospital . I really liked that twist from the original film . Brigitte infected herself with her sister's contaminated blood to prove her determination to help her find a cure , which they never found . Ginger was killed , and Brigitte was never cured . A nice premise that is used to segway into a thriller that takes place in the old hospital setting . In a display of the level of help that is to be expected from the hospital where Brigitte is being kept , she is quickly diagnosed as a lesbian by one member of the hospital staff . Excellent work there , lady . Before too long , Brigitte learns that a young girl named Ghost ( who apparently lives in the hospital ) is her only friend , but who reads so many horror comics that evidently it's normal for her to say things like " When you close your eyes is it hell you see ? " Here's an odd thing about this character - she looks to be about ten years old , but is played by 19-year-old Tatiana Maslany . It seems that Ghosts grandmother was horribly burned in a fire at home , which landed her and her granddaughter in the rehab facility featured in the movie . Why an accidental fire landed her in a rehab facility is a mystery that is thinly explained later in the film . Most of the tension in the movie is derived from the fact that Brigitte is being held in this hospital to be rehabilitated from a drug that she needs in order to prevent herself from turning into a werewolf and killing everyone in sight . Needless to say , it is not taken very well when she explains that if she is kept there , people will die . Ginger makes occasional appearances as a vision of her former self , usually showing up to give Brigitte some useful insights into the changes that are taking place in her body , reprising the satire on female adolescence covered so well in the first film . My favorite example of this in the first sequel was when Brigitte presumably falls asleep during one of her meetings and dreams that the instructor is telling her and the rest of the girls to masturbate . When she wakes up , she runs to the bathroom and taps on one of her eyeballs , which seems to have turned to glass , and notices thick skin and hair on her palms . I knew that masturbation gives you hairy palms and makes you go blind , but I didn't know that werewolves had glass eyes . At least the metaphor worked halfway though . We gradually see Brigitte's transformation into a werewolf as she constantly tries to find ways to stop it ( usually ways which include things like slicing off the new growths that she doesn't like , like her pointy ears ) . Pretty nasty , but at least it's logical , right ? What other choice does she have ? Where the movie makes serious lapses in logic is in the setup of the hospital . Ghost has no reason for being there ( except for one big reason , which we find out later but which no one in the hospital knows about ) , and the residents are locked down at night but allowed to wander outside at other times . One patient sells her body to one of the orderlies , who does this regularly , so that he will give her some narcotics , and when Brigitte walks in just after it happened , the girl offers her some . You think coke addicts have sex for drugs and then offer to share them ? Given that so much stock is put into the character of Ghost , it's amazing how badly written her part is . They tried to get her to fit into what they wanted her character to ultimately mean to the story , but had no idea how to make it happen . That's why you have this little kid living in a hospital , evidently sleeping in a chair next to her all but mummified grandmother , doing things with comic books that no kid does , especially not a girl , and talking about them like she's a professor of philosophy . She also sees the world as though it were a comic book , which is in keeping with the fate of her character , she even narrates occasionally , describing situations as though she were reading them off the page . I actually liked the speech-bubble narration that she prattled off occasionally , although sometimes it goes over the top . What , for example , is a " reign of moral terror ? " Does that mean , like , terrorizing people who believe that homosexuals should be allowed to marry ? The end of the film was fairly good , I especially loved what became of the orderly that made a habit of forcing the girls in the hospital into sex acts with him , a practice which he indulged in so regularly that it is astounding he was never caught . There is an odd scene near the end when a deer has to be put out of its misery despite being completely eviscerated and on FIRE , but overall the ending was one of the stronger parts of the film . I had a hard time getting through the first half , but probably mostly because I still wanted to watch Halloween IV , Jasper , Texas , and the original Time Machine before the end of the night . Fans of the original should enjoy this , but if you had enough with part 1 you can skip this one . It's not any better . |
543,961 | 562,732 | 173,840 | 5 | Yet another overblown movie based on a video game . | Almost immediately after the release and failure of the highly overrated Tomb Raider comes the release of Final Fantasy : The Spirits Within . While Final Fantasy wasn't nearly as bad as Tomb Raider , the spiritual element made up far too much of the story for the film as a whole to be taken seriously . The religious aspect is unmistakable and almost suffocating , as Aki and Dr . Sid and the others search feverishly for the spirits that are expected to collectively eliminate all of the invading phantoms . There are many other heavily religious allusions , not the least of which is the basic good vs . evil story structure and the clearly Satanic appearance of the phantoms themselves . One of the great ironies of computer animation , that this film in particular brings to attention , is the fact that the better it gets , the less necessary it is . Sure , there are things that can be done with computer animation that would be impossible to film with real actors , but Final Fantasy looked so real that many of the scenes may as well have been real . On the other hand , humans have been particularly troublesome in computer animated films - they just never quite look right . But here , they are so real that it is unnerving , but this time , they screwed up the humans MOVEMENTS . No matter how real they looked in the movie , the actual motion was still entirely robotic . Besides that , it was a mistake to have so many well known actors lending their voices to the film , because all that did was take voices that we know and put them on other people , which was distracting because the people looked so real . This all makes you wonder when full-length animated films will become obsolete and computer animation will be used only to add to the special effects of other movies . On the other hand , Final Fantasy did have some of the most amazing scenery ever made with computer animation . The desolated New York City was amazingly real , and the idea of the humans hiding in gigantic enclosed areas to keep safe from the phantoms was also very interesting . But in the second half of the film , this all gets a little convoluted and we see the sacrifice of the human element of the movie in favor of the competition between Dr . Sid's peaceful theory and General Hein's militaristic tactics , as the two clash at the film's climax . Final Fantasy is not a complete failure , and is far superior to it's real life counterpart , the awful Tomb Raider , but there can be no mistake that it is disappointing . Fans of the video game may enjoy it , but this is not for general audiences . |
544,668 | 562,732 | 734,597 | 5 | What ? | I borrowed Season 2 of the Twilight Zone from my mother-in-law about a week ago ( my brother's wife's mother . Is that my mother-in-law ? Stepmother-in-law ? ) , and this was the first episode that I watched , just because I was surprised to see that William Shatner was starring in it . He looks absolutely nothing like the William Shatner that we now know and love ( seriously , nothing at all . If it wasn't for his voice it would be hard to believe it's the same guy ) , and the second thing that struck me was that there was nothing at all strange or paranormal taking place in the episode from beginning to end , which is something that I haven't come to expect from a Twilight Zone episode . Shatner stars as Don Carter , and one day he and his wife Pat go into a cafe that has a little penny machine on the table that tells your future . Casually , he puts in a few pennies and asks a few yes or no questions , and is absolutely astonished by the generic answers that he gets . Why is he so stunned by the answers ? Never once does the machine give anything but a generic response , and never once does it give either a yes answer or a no answer to one of Don's yes or no questions . All he ever gets are things like " What do you think ? " and " It has already been taken care of , " and " Your chances are good . " Don is blown away . I would hate to see this guy reading some fortune cookies or his horoscope , he might lose his mind ! The black and white lighting , as usual , is one of the best elements of the episode , and the music does a fine job of lending a tone of otherworldly presence in a show whose most otherworldly thing is the incredible gullibility of the main characters . Even though the episode is ultimately disappointing in its lack of content , it's still another interesting look at that Back to the Future set at Universal Studios and the early career of one of science fiction's most recognizable stars . |
544,820 | 562,732 | 105,121 | 5 | One of Wes Craven's weakest films . | The People Under the Stairs isn't even one of those Wes Craven films that's weak because it was a popular or critical disaster , like some of his best films were ( such as The Last House on the Left and The Hills Have Eyes ) , this movie was just goofy camp . Structurally , the film is very good . Craven has a very well written plot fighting for families in the inner city that are victimized by greedy landlords , but it gets goofy along the way , mostly because the father , one of the main characters , is trying to be Leatherface and Ash from The Evil Dead at the same time rather than creating an original character . Seriously , if you combine Leatherface and Ash , this guy is exactly what you get . Exactly . Speaking of the father , it's odd that the IMDb lists the two main characters as Man ; Dad , and Woman ; Mom , since they are revealed to be brother and sister late in the movie . Nevertheless , they are clearly a severely disturbed couple , whatever their relationship , as is made clear as one minor character explains to his grandson , curiously named Fool and the star of the film , that the family has been filthy rich and completely insane for generations , each generation crazier than the last . It seems that the one featured in this film has been kidnapping children for years and adopting them as their own , then forcing them to live in the basement for all eternity if they misbehave . As was the case with those two girls abducted in the first act of The Hillside Strangler , it is indeed odd that no one ever caught on . At one point in the film we learn that the police have been trying for years to be able to look deeper into the mysterious case surrounding these two people , yet when they find a stolen van in their driveway , they just say they haven't seen anyone in the house and the cops tell them to have a nice day and drive off , not having even investigated why there was a stolen van in their driveway . What was that ? The biggest problem with the people under the stairs is that not only are the people under the stairs not supposed to be scary , they're supposed to be victims . Actually , maybe they were meant to be scary . That would certainly explain why the plot leads us to believe that they're still alive down there , surviving only on the random scraps thrown to them and a seemingly insatiably appetite for watching the news about Iraq War I , but the makeup artists make us believe that they're zombies . No way are those people still alive , their skin is rotting off their bones . Even better are the characters of Alice and Roach , played by Sean Whalen in his film debut . It seems that Roach has escaped the basement and spends his time wandering the huge hallways that exist inside the walls in this massively inefficiently built house , avoiding his " father , " who is uncontrollably furious that he has escaped the basement . When the cops show up to investigate complaints they've received about gunshots in the area , they walk through the house , not seeing the huge holes that Dad has blasted in the walls throughout the house , because they have somehow managed to fix them instantaneously , and leaving happily after a few cups of coffee and some cookies . Everything seemed fine to them . If nothing else , I would have been mildly curious as to why , in a house with elegant furniture and mahogany walls , the kitchen was protected by an industrial steel wall . Ving Rhames plays the part of LeRoy , a family friend so close to the family that he brings Fool on a trip to rob the landlords , who are rumored to have buried treasure in their house . Yes , buried treasure . Fool's mom has cancer and they're being evicted for being all of three days late with their rent ( more proof that the movie has more to say about the plight of the inner cities than anything else ) , so it's up to Fool to save the day . Sadly , the only thing scary about this movie is that it is based , albeit loosely , on a true story about parents that locked their kids in the basement for many years . |
544,010 | 562,732 | 89,880 | 5 | Wow , 1985 wasn't such a good year for Stallone ! | In watching First Blood Part 2 the first thing that I was struck by was that , as I was watching for classic cheesy moments , one of my favorite reasons to watch old action movies , I soon noticed that the cheese-factor in this movie is astronomical . In fact , the entire movie is basically a 97-minute cheese moment , it never stops ! Also , I just noticed on the IMDb that First Blood Part 2 ( probably the most awkward name for a sequel until the much-anticipated Jason X Part 2 comes out at some yet to be determined date ) is that it was nominated for an Oscar for Best Sound Effects Editing , but was also nominated at the Razzie Awards for Worst Supporting Actress , Worst New Star ( this was definitely a deserved win , by the way ) , and Worst Director , and WON for Worst Screenplay , Worst Original Song , Worst Actor ( also in Rocky IV , which is a distantly better movie ! ) , and Worst Picture . Don't miss this one ! Rambo has now been in a prison camp for 5 years breaking rocks and such , when suddenly a military man approaches and tells him that the United States has a certain sensitive situation in Vietnam that could earn Rambo his freedom , were he to help them to solve it . It seems that there are still missing POWs in Vietnam and they need Rambo to get in there and take pictures of where they're being held so they can send in a tactical search and rescue team . Rambo , of course , is trained in search and rescue himself ( and also he's freaking Rambo ) so he can't bring himself to simply take pictures and then leave the Americans in captivity , so he takes the mission of the rescue entirely upon himself . He is helped along the way by the astonishingly beautiful Co Bao , a Vietnamese freedom fighter . This woman is unbelievably beautiful , but sadly she does nothing but stop the already unimpressive movie in its tracks as we're asked to believe this girl is a militant freedom fighter . And the fact that Julia Nickson-Soul ( the much deserved winner of that Worst New Star award ) is absolutely incapable of covering up the fact that she is a native English speaker didn't help matters either . The accent on that woman in this movie is hilarious ! There are some corrupt American officials and policies involved in the mission as well , all providing a sufficient set-up for Rambo to trample through the movie distributing Rambo - style justice to wherever it may be needed . I have to say the first movie wasn't even very good , but the descent that Part 2 has made is genuinely surprising . Definitely the worst of the not-very-impressive series , but it's still tons of fun . That should tell you all you need to know ! |
544,776 | 562,732 | 99,180 | 5 | ? and God created woman ? | It's murder ! It's blasphemy ! It's ? it's misogyny ! ! If ever a single line described an entire movie , that one describes Bride of Re-Animator . Not that it's a direct quote , but close . Dr . Herbert West is back and crazier than ever , having become less of a scientist desperately pursuing work that is highly unethical but which he truly believes can help mankind in the end and more of a mad scientist who just wants to see dead people walking around . In the original film he had a vicious intelligence that made you want to see him succeed in conquering death , but here all he really wants to do is piece pieces of dead people together , pour his chem-light juice on them and watch them walk around . When on earth else would he put some fingers together with an eyeball on top and animate the pieces into a grotesque walking spider ? Not that that was entirely unappreciated . I always enjoy comic relief in horror movies , and this one is even campier than its predecessor , which is a camp classic . But when making a sequel to a camp classic , I think it is just a little bit dangerous to take the material even less seriously than the first movie . The zombies are smarter in this one ( " My god , they're using tools ! " ) and the experiments more extreme , like piecing together a woman from a whole array of parts from half a dozen different people , but it is harder to take Dr . West seriously even as a horror movie scientist when he proudly points at his hideous monster of a creation and mocks what God or woman can produce . The music is still an unveiled rip-off of the Psycho soundtrack , but at least it is kept mostly to the very beginning and very end of the movie , rather than played almost nonstop like it was in the first movie . But what was most irritating was the severed head that kept popping up throughout the movie , talking in a raspy voice which I imagine was meant to be scary but comes off as ridiculous because of the lack of vocal cords , to say nothing of the lack of lungs to push air over them . The goofy , toothy performance was just too much for me . Man , that head would just not go away . The end of the movie turns into a reanimating free-for-all , where all intent on helping mankind by beating death is forgotten in favor of piecing together human body parts in as many different combinations as possible , resulting in things like a man who is nothing but a head , a right arm , a right leg backwards for a left arm , and a breast growing out of his shoulder . It's like a sick version of that head and shoulders thing that Chatterer had been reduced to in Hellraiser Inferno . Anyway , the movie has completely lost direction by this point and become little more than a gory mishmash of the premise that the series was originally based on . Gore fans may get a kick out of that , but I get the feeling that true Re-Animator fans would be offended that the original classic film was reduced to that level . |
543,858 | 562,732 | 95,742 | 5 | Interesting transition . | SPOILERS SPOILERS Picking up not long after where Part 3 left off , A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 4 has the strange transitional quality of including several characters from the last film , but pretty much just long enough for them to get killed off . Kristen is no longer played by Patricia Arquette , but by the curiously named Tuesday Knight instead , and she is now attempting to gain some semblance of a normal life . Roland Kincaid , who we remember from the last film , has started having nightmares of his own , one of which involves a scene at the junkyard where Freddy's bones were carelessly disposed of , and in which they are brought back to life . Bet you didn't see that one coming . ( spoilers ) So the whole thing about Freddy not being ' completely killed in the last movie , ' one of the biggest clichés in the episodic horror movie genre , is slightly covered over with one of the weirdest and weakest attempts at originality which I can even begin to remember in just about any genre . Kincaid has this dream about the junkyard that he first saw in the lat movie , and in this one , he watches as his dog digs up Freddy's bones and then does something that I don't think anyone could have anticipated . In that sense , at least it wasn't predictable , right ? It could have been something straight out of the index like a bolt of lightning or even an earthquake to bring Freddy back to life , but no . The dog digs up his bones , and then brings them back to life . By peeing on them . And not just that , he pees FIRE onto Freddy's bones . I've been going back and watching all the Nightmare on Elm Street films as well as the Friday the 13th films because I want to refresh my memory before watching Freddy vs . Jason ( and don't worry , I realize how contemptuously bad that movie simply HAS to be ) . One of the things that I've noticed is how much more tongue-in-cheek the Freddy movies are , how much more comic relief there is and how much more glossed over they are than the Friday films , which tend to be much more abrasive and lean more toward a painful reaction at the vicious murders . Freddy , for example , is constantly cracking stupid jokes and spouting goofy one-liners , often before gleefully ramming all of his finger-knives into a victim . Jason , on the other hand , is completely soundless . He just doesn't stop coming until he's skewered someone . I don't think you need to have this juxtaposition of these two hugely popular horror series ' to know that the Nightmare on Elm Street films progressively take themselves less and less seriously , but the dog peeing fire is certainly a signpost of the last shred of dignity that these movies ever had . The potential of the Nightmare on Elm Street films took a huge hit in Part 2 , for example , when Jesse was cleaning his room , then another one in the same room with the wet towels , and yet it's telling that Part 2 was one of the better sequels . The dog peeing on the bones was , I think , the one point in the entire six-movie saga at which all credibility was lost , and the rest of this movie and the other sequels and rendered little more than tired exercises in throwing together just enough of a plot for Freddy to come in and coast through the movie on his massive popularity . By this point in the series , Freddy has become an icon , a hero to the preteen and teen target audiences , which only disturbs me because he is the ghost of a child molester . Must there be so much effort put into making him likable ? When you see that Freddy is killing off the remaining characters from the last movie , the last of the Elm Street kids , as it were , it seems strange that he makes such quick progress , but soon you realize it's because that's not the point of the movie . He can't just kill them off an no one else , that would run the risk of no room for more sequels ! No , there must be new kids to kill so that more tenuous connections can be made to the original Elm Street kids and more movies can be made . It's interesting to note that if Freddy ever fulfills his revenge , he'll effectively kill himself because he'll have no more reason to exist . Freddy's new trick is to make Kristen pull all of her friends into her dreams so that he can kill them . She is reasonably safe , since she is providing Freddy with so much new teen flesh to cut up ( and because she'll be needed to almost-but-not-quite kill Freddy at the end of the movie ) , but it's strange that she always pulls in her closest friends to be killed off . Yes , she gains some sort of power from each of them after Freddy kills them , which she uses in the final climactic scene , but it's also interesting to consider what might have happened had she dreamed of a machine gun or something . The least her friends could have done was go to sleep with a butcher knife or something . As far as the killings , the transformation from Freddy's stalking habits in the original film has evolved from subtly scary relentlessness to cartoonish exaggeration . There's a scene where he's actually on a sunny beach in this movie ( which explains why so many horror movie are deliberately so badly lit , since this scene is about as scary as a Colgate commercial ) , there's a scene where he squishes one of his victims in a roach motel , there's even a scene where he's invisible and kung-fu fighting with one of his victims just before he kills him . What the hell is all this ? There are a couple of scenes that are relatively effective , such as one where one of the characters is bench pressing and Freddy pushes the bar toward her chest until her elbows snap and break open like crab legs , but then she starts turning into a cockroach , evidently just so Freddy can kill her in the above-mentioned roach motel . I should mention that the special effects used to turn her into a cockroach were actually pretty effective , but they lead up to one of the dumber scenes in the movie . There is also an interesting scene near the end where the souls of the children that Freddy have killed tear out of his body and consume him , but it's a long haul sitting through the rest of this movie for that , and even then it's not exactly much of a payoff . It's sad how far Freddy has changed from the demonic ghost of a deranged killer with the curious ability to kill his victims in their dreams , into a wise-cracking goofball who spouts one-liners and then kills his victims , almost as though the murders are the encore . People laugh at his jokes , then cheer when he splatters someone . Even more than now , the comparisons back in 1988 to the brilliant stand-up comedian Gallagher's routine had to have been noticed . Gallagher got up there on stage , made the audience laugh with his jokes , then splattered some watermelons . Is Freddy's job by now any different ? |
544,042 | 562,732 | 444,682 | 5 | Sadly inconsequential religious thriller . | In my experience , religious thrillers have the unfortunate habit of looking good but ultimately turning out as a disappointment ( I'm thinking of End of Days , at the moment ) . Nevertheless , Hillary Swank lends credibility to a story that , sadly , turns out as a disappointment . I am not an avid Bible reader , but I do know about the 10 biblical plagues , and I have to say that I just always envisioned them on a slightly larger scale , and part of the reason that I watched the movie was because I was interested to see how they would be portrayed in a movie with modern special effects . And seeing Swank starring so soon after her astonishing performance in Million Dollar Baby made me believe that the CGI people wouldn't lose all control and blow everything cartoonishly out of proportion , as modern special effects teams all too often do . Besides starring double Oscar winner Hillary Swank , the movie is also associated with Joel Silver and Robert Zemeckis , which led me to believe that it might be among the better psychological / religious thrillers and horror films , like The Exorcist , The Omen , and the recent Exorcism of Emily Rose , which remains one of the scariest movies I've ever seen . Sadly , The Reaping is a religious thriller that doesn't really take itself or its content seriously , leaving a feeling that they used Katherine's faith as a cheap plot device to provide her character with drive . We are introduced to the character of Katherine ( Swank ) as she investigates a region in Africa , I think , which is thought to be experiencing some kind of divine retribution . She returns to her grad school students at Louisiana State University to give them the scientific breakdown of her investigation , closing with the impressive claim that that's 48 alleged " miracles " with 48 perfectly rational , scientific explanations . After that , it's pretty much all downhill . Katherine is ominously approached by a man with a report of another town that seems to be suffering from God's wrath because their river has apparently turned into blood , and Katherine only agrees to check it out because the townspeople ( who , we soon learn , are religious fanatics if there ever were any ) have blamed it all on a little girl . I think this will be the real start of the problems with the movie because it will immediately alienate a good majority of the rational audience , who will immediately think of the microorganisms that could turn water red before thinking of divine intervention . The fact that the townspeople immediately blame a 12-year-old girl , if nothing else , makes it pointedly difficult to identify with them . Soon we meet some and discover that they are as fanatical as they seem ( " Some people just don't want to go to heaven ? " ) . With the exception of the locusts , which were overdone ( although they vanished as quickly as they appeared ) , the plagues are a tremendous disappointment . The frogs are introduced as a scene that should have been a good scare but was instead a let-down . A dozen or so frogs falling from the sky , which are almost ignored . The flies are limited to a single barbecue ! Most amazing to me , however , is the fact that Katherine is such an experienced investigator of these claims , but she has to mail a sample of the river water to see what it really is . Is human blood really that hard to identify ? Apparently it is for this team , as they put a sample into their chemistry set and are perplexed by the results ( " Black isn't even on the chart ? " ) . The Reaping is so unremarkable that about six months ago I bought it on DVD and watched it , and then put it away . A few months later , I bought it again , thinking that maybe Hillary Swank would make it good , and brought it home only to discover that I had already been disappointed by it once before . Save yourself the trouble the first time ? |
544,090 | 562,732 | 130,121 | 5 | This is even bad for a Hugh Grant movie . | Hugh Grant is widely considered to be one of the more aggravating actors working today . He constantly plays roles which are really only thinly disguised caricatures of the same dainty British guy who has managed to get himself in over his head . Like Woody Allen , his movies are also packed full of little good-naturedly sarcastic one-liners which , ironically , are often the funniest parts of his films . In the James Bond films , the constant barrage of one-liners serve to do little more than remove any scrap of respectability from the films and reduce them to childish excursions full of meaningless sexual innuendos , while in films like Mickey Blue Eyes , these one-liners are quite often genuinely amusing , and some of the better parts of the movie . As the rest of the movie will show , however , having successful one-liners does not by any stretch of the imagination make for a good movie . Grant plays the role of Michael Felgate , an art dealer with a stable career and high hopes of an approaching marriage . He goes through his life happily , running auctions at which he sells obscure paintings for obscene amounts o f money , spending time with his significant other , Gina Vitale ( Jeanne Tripplehorn - I'll get to her later ) , and occasionally dropping amusing wise-cracks . In other words , he's pretty much a regular guy . The introduction of the conflict in the film comes from his efforts to get Gina to agree to marry him . When Michael makes a charming but vain attempt to propose to her through a note inserted into a fortune cookie , Gina freaks out and storms out of the restaurant , telling Michael that she can't , she just can't , leaving him alone in the restaurant and leaving the audience wondering what her intentions had been thus far in the relationship if marriage was so simply out of the question . Besides the botched romance , Tripplehorn delivers an absolutely abysmal performance as the poor poor daughter of the mobster who is just so devastated that she can't marry her true love . She plays the victim well enough , but it's just groan-inducing to watch her make horribly vain attempts to act emotional scenes . Every time she got upset I just wanted to leave the room . The conflict has been thus introduced - Gina can't marry Michael because there are things about her family that he doesn't know about and that she is ashamed to have him discover , which is why she stomped out of the restaurant as though he had admitted cheating on her rather than proposed to her . So after she changes her mind and decides to stay with him just as fast as she rejected him , Michael decides to take it upon himself to get to know her family and thereby resolve any conflict that Gina may have been concerned about . What you have here is a typical formula comedy that unrepentedly feeds off of the stereotypical Italian mafia family , basically stealing the formula from the classic comedies ( namingly The Odd Couple , the formula of which has probably been imitated on a plot level more than any other in cinematic history ) and adding it to the only bad thing about The Godfather , which is the fact that it presented a tremendously stereotypical account of Italians as criminals . Mickey Blue Eyes does nothing new , but rather adds the typical Hugh Grant character to the above borrowed formulas , resulting in a significantly disappointing comedy . The only mildly amusing things in this film are Michael's occasional witty comments , which are punctuated by a series of painfully unamusing scenes - such anything involving the butchering of a foreign accent or a Chinese restaurant owner screaming at Gina to eat fking cookie . It's amazing to me that that ridiculous scene made it into this film . For the most part , they at least got their stereotypical representation of the Italian crime family at least partially right . And by that , of course , I mean that they did a god job stealing the traditional hierarchy of Hollywood's version of Italian crime families , and Mickey Blue Eyes does more than it's part to ensure the world that there are no other types of Italian families than this . As far as the performances , not everything was bad . Jeanne Tripplehorn , as I've already mentioned , immensely over-acted her role , reducing her performance almost to farce , and Hugh Grant was horribly miscast from the outset , but there are some performances in the film that are worth noting . Joe Viterelli , who amazingly manages to look decades younger than he is , is back in basically the exact same role that he played in Analyze This , an immensely superior film . James Caan delivers a performance as Gina's mob father that is just about as fantastic as the material will allow , and more than any other , Burt Young as Vito Graziosi , sort of the head of the family , performs so well in his role that he deserves to be in a far better film . It's too bad that Mickey Blue Eyes turned out to be such a spectacular failure , because it works from a premise that could have made for a much better film . In a way , this movie failed in exactly the same way that Hollow Man did - there were nearly endless possibilities , but they were all ignored in favor of the childish slop that you see in the final cut . We can hope that someday someone will steal the premise of this movie and make that better film , but the unfortunate fact is that this is just not the kind of film that strikes filmmakers as something to borrow from . Ah , well . . . |
544,237 | 562,732 | 279,784 | 5 | Back when commercials meant something . . . | The thing that really struck me about this short comedy is that it is all about a guy who makes a radio commercial for a local donut shop because he actually cares about the well-being of its owner , a woman named Dora with whom he is clearly romantically interested ( and who is clearly romantically interested in him as well ) . In a time when we are bombarded with obnoxious advertisements and endless streams of commercials , it is indeed interesting to look back to a time when it would be acceptable to make a movie about making a commercial . Today , commercials have become so widespread that they're like a cancer on society , you can't go anywhere anymore without being advertised at , they even show commercials before the previews start at the movie theaters now . And I thought I spent $10 to get in so I could get AWAY from the commercials . Shirley Temple is not the star of this short film , although it's easy to see why she is so good at coming to the forefront , because as is to be expected , she steals every scene that she's in , even though she is the only person who doesn't fit in at all . The film concerns a school band taught by a charming teacher named Andy , although all of the students appear to be about junior high school age , except for 5 year old Shirley . Unfortunately , the movie loses its way completely in the second half , with the thin script being abandoned completely at about the time that people start fighting . An improvised one-man performance of Little Red Riding Hood is thrown in out of nowhere , and then we are treated to a couple of pie throwing sight gags ( which are not entirely without effect ) before the movie makes short work of solving the crisis that it introduced about Dora's struggling bakery , as well as the budding romance between her and Andy . It wastes a lot of time in the last act and is hardly up to par with the short comedies of the time , but is still a charming little film . |
544,353 | 562,732 | 45,810 | 5 | Please direct your hate mail messages to miked32 @ hotmail . com . Thanks . | I know that I am going to get some pretty angry e-mails from at least a few people , as is almost always the case when I write scathing reviews of popular movies . I realize that Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is a classic comedy , and not only because it stars Marilyn Monroe . But therein lies my biggest problem with the film . Marilyn Monroe is not very arguably the most famous blonde who ever lived , and in this movie she glorifies air-headedness and the prostitution of the female form for financial gain . Before I go on , by the way , I would like to point out that she delivered a wonderful performance and I am saying nothing against either her as an actor or as a person , but this role should probably not have been given to her because her tremendous iconography gives her the power to influence a great many women , and the influence delivered in this movie is not a very healthy one , especially in the early 1950s . I was shocked when I read the review on the IMDb's title page for Gentlemen Prefer Blondes . ' TJBNYC , ' as he or she calls him - or herself , starts out by saying that ' Anyone who's ever written off Marilyn Monroe as ' just ' a dumb blonde are directed to this film immediately . ' I think it would be a better idea to point out to anyone that's ever written off Marilyn Monroe as ' just ' a dumb blonde be reminded of the nature of the medium of film . What you see on screen are characters and if the actor makes you believe a character is a dumb blonde , it goes to the credit of their acting ability . But more important than that , this is probably the last film that someone like that should be directed to see because a dumb blonde is exactly what she portrays . If , however , you manage to make it through to the end of this endurance test , you will see that they luckily made an effort to show that she had something going on in her head all along , even though this effort is a feeble and almost entirely futile one . ( spoilers ) On the one hand , Marilyn Monroe plays a character named Lorelei Lee who says things with wide-eyed innocence ( oblivion ) like , ' Piggy was playing the python , and I was the goat . ' and ' This is like a room , isn't it ! ' I always feel dumber after watching stuff like that , but I suppose there is some intelligence to her character that becomes apparent as we realize her cunning ability to get the pretty things that she likes by using whatever power she has available . Sure , this is completely useless knowledge to anyone but an air-headed blonde , but there you go . Lorelei has something going on in her head after all . The real point where they vainly attempt to cancel out her blondeness is at the very end when she turns everything around and Gus's father comes right out and says , ' Hey , they told me you were stupid ! ' What you have here is a shameless attempt to deliver Marilyn as a complete bimbo and then try to suddenly turn it around at the end to make it seem that she was putting us on the whole time and she's really not a moron after all . The problem that Howard Hawks should have kept in mind is that the audience forms their opinion of a character very early in a movie , and if we see a bimbo for 90 minutes , she stays a bimbo no matter how smart she acts in the last scene . There is nothing spectacular about Gentlemen Prefer Blondes , there are even several scenes that are downright bad or tasteless or both , such as the goat / python scene mentioned above ( with a scene like this , NO amount of genius later in the film could reverse Lorelei's idiot character ) and the truly awful scene where Laura sings ' Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend ' in a skanky outfit to distract everyone . I can only imagine it is now considered a classic because Marilyn Monroe is the star . I haven't seen many of her other films , but I can only hope that they are better than this one . |
543,755 | 562,732 | 821,642 | 5 | Uninspired retread of well-known morals ? | I'm hoping that The Soloist will come across as one of the most disappointing movies of 2009 , because if we get anything more of a letdown than this it's gonna be pretty bad . I awaited the movie with enormous anticipation . Jamie Foxx has proved himself as a tremendously talented actor many times over , and Robert Downey Jr . , long since one of my favorite actors , is at the height of his career with his work in movies like Iron Man and Tropic Thunder , as well as the upcoming Sherlock Holmes , Master Mind , The Avengers , and Iron Man 2 . Now , I hope I can say this without sounding like I'm really bashing the movie , because it is competently made and competently acted , but there were points in the movie where the pure badness almost approached camp . There is no doubt that the movie was green-lighted and cast with visions of Oscars dancing in the heads of Jamie Foxx , Robert Downey Jr . and the movie's producers , but somewhere along the way there was a necessary element that just never made it into the final cut . The movie definitely has it's fans and it certainly is a moving story , but I can tell you with pretty strong certainty that there are no Oscars in The Soloist's future . That being said , I should probably also admit that I had the hardest time putting my finger on exactly what went wrong . Maybe it is something as simple as a permeating lack of originality . Maybe the presentation of a mentally ill main character was handled without the necessary subtlety or authenticity . In Tropic Thunder , Robert Downey Jr . himself expounded on the dangers of an actor going full retard , maybe this is a case of what happens when you go ' full crazy ? ' Whatever the case , I am truly sorry to say that both stars have scenes where their performances come across as almost bizarrely cheesy . Of course it might be just me , but I doubt it . Robert Downey Jr . plays Steve Lopez , a Los Angeles Times columnist desperate for a good story , when he one day runs into Nathaniel Ayers ( Jamie Foxx ) , a homeless man with obviously tremendous musical talent . There goes cliché number one . Through a muddled combination of personal interest and hope for the betterment of Ayers ' life , Lopez makes it his life's to get Ayers off the streets , on medication , and into a successful musical career where he belongs . It's hard not to be moved by such a story , but it's also hard to find anything original in it . It's based on a true story , even to the point of showing an incident where an elderly LA Times reader sent in her own cello , one she had been playing herself for decades , because she was so moved by Lopez's story about Ayers . The movie's presentation of this event is one of its simplest but best scenes . But after that ? what ? I won't ruin the story for you , because while I found the movie disappointing , I would also say that it's not disappointing to the point that people shouldn't watch it . But it leaves you with a definite feeling that it should have been something more , or that the true story on which it's based simply doesn't have the ingredients for a successful drama . There is a point in the movie , for example , where Ayers utters the line , " If I ever see you again I'll cut you open and gut you like a fish . " I appreciate the portrayal of paralyzing mental confusion , but I'm going to go ahead and suggest the majority of the audience is going to see that as a good time to turn your life - saving mission over to professionals who have some idea of what they're dealing with . Then again , it's also exactly this kind of difficulty that has led to the most satisfying struggles against the odds in similarly uplifting movies , but The Soloist argues that friendship should be enough to overcome even the most insurmountable barriers , it takes us on this painful struggle with a damaged mind , and then , worst of all , it all leads up to one of those stupid , stupid voice-over speeches at the end that's supposed to tie everything up with a cute little bow . God I can't stand that . Watch the movie when it comes out on DVD . It's not a complete failure , but it is much less than the sum of its parts and it gives that feeling that it is always just about to develop into something really great but it just never happens . It does a good job of approaching the difficult paradox of how far people should be able to go in efforts to force a better life on someone , but for all of the ambition clearly involved in its production , it should easily have forced out a much better movie . |
544,139 | 562,732 | 85,636 | 5 | What's this about a witch , now ? | Almost universally hated for being such a digression from the much known and loved Halloween movies , Halloween III comes along almost like John Carpenter and Debra Hill , who produced it , are trying to sneak up on audiences and show them something they weren't expecting . While it's true that it has absolutely nothing to do with the two Michael Meyers slashers that came before it other than the fact that we see commercials for the original Halloween film on TV sets in this movie a couple times , it's not true that this is one of the worst horror films ever made , as I've heard it called very many times . I saw the movie about ten years ago , when I was in junior high school , and the two things that I remember were bugs crawling out of the masks while they were on peoples ' heads and that god-awful music they played during the Silver Shamrock commercials . So when I watched it again tonight I tried to look at it as a separate film from the other Halloween movies , because I think that it's association with them is a large part of why so many people hate it . In a horror series that at the time of this writing has spawned seven sequels , including this one , it's the one movie that simply doesn't belong . Unfortunately , even as a separate film , Halloween III doesn't have much going for it . Clearly , there was enough stock put into the disturbing nature of the crime involved , since we are not given a reason for its existence . An elderly toy maker has developed a scheme to sell masks rigged with secret electronic devices , then on Halloween night at 9pm stage a Big Giveaway on TV , at which point he will broadcast a special commercial I supposed reminiscent of those commercials in Japan that are supposed to give you seizures . This version will activate the electronic devices lodged in the masks and cause them to somehow turn kids heads into piles of creepy crawlies . What is the purpose behind this scheme ? What does this guy hope to achieve ? And what the hell does Stonehenge have to do with anything ? His hordes of robotic assistants is at least explainable by his need for secrecy given what he's really up to in that factory ( and I imagine they have something to do with his remarkable ability to essentially hold an entire town hostage without even a single person leaving and complaining to authorities . Early in the film , a guy runs frantically into a gas station asking for help and is brought to a hospital to receive medical attention . Once there , a well-dressed gentleman walks calmly into his hospital room and pulls his skull apart , then just as calmly walks outside , gets into his car , douses himself with gasoline and promptly sets himself on fire . The subsequent mess is left to the hospital staff to clean up , as the car is left smoldering in the parking lot the next day without an inch of police tape around it and a lab technician is left to pore through the ashes . What is truly funny is the length of time that this technician spends sifting through these ashes before she realizes that they are nothing but car parts , a stupendous explosion of idiocy that she describes as a ' colossal boo-boo . ' The doctor working at the hospital takes it upon himself to do a little investigating into the situation , traveling to the town that houses the Silver Shamrock factory , which of course sports an Irish caricature of a man presiding over the local hotel . I have to admit that I thought that the ' misfire ' scene was pretty impressive , and is one of at least a few scenes that tend to argue that this movie deserved a title that would not have cast it in an eternal shadow . For the first thirty minutes or so , the movie is very impressive . The opening shot of the man running as fast as he can out of a calm night is especially unsettling , as is that entire chase between him and his robotic pursuers , whom we know nothing about at the time . But the more we learn about what's really going on , the less believable the movie becomes , until it hits rock bottom with Conal Cochran , the evil toymaker , gleefully giving Challis , the investigating doctor , a tour of his underground facility and a detailed description of his wicked plans , coming dangerously close to a Scooby-Doo ending . I really don't think that the movie is as bad as so many people seem to think , it's just too bad that it starts out so well but by the end the last attacks of the final un-killable robot are simply tiresome . By the end , I was just waiting for it to end , but at the beginning I found it very interesting . I think that these two things balance themselves out in terms of the quality of the movie , and then the association with the other two previous Halloween films is just another nail in this movie's coffin . |
544,076 | 562,732 | 177,971 | 5 | This film's main redeeming value was the fact that it was based on a true story , and it vaguely communicated the events of that story . However , it was also badly distorted by the influences of Hollywood . | The Perfect Storm is an extremely difficult kind of film to make . No matter how you approach it , the budget is going to have to be huge , and there will definitely be some scenes that will simply be impossible to film on location . Hence , special effects are necessary . Given that , even though I generally feel that less is more as far as special effects , I respect the extensive use of special effects in this film . Without computer generated images , this film would never have been made . However , it should be noted that the convenience of special effects led to a high degree of questionable and , at some points , laughable excesses which were portrayed on the screen during The Perfect Storm . It was hard enough for me that every single external shot was obviously computer generated , but then the activities of the waves themselves during the storm were exaggerated to ridiculous proportions . First , yes there are waves that get that big and much bigger every day in the open ocean , but they are also several miles long . The constant straight up and straight down of the waves in the film is simply not true . However , when these waves collide , they do create very tall and very steep waves called ' rogue ' waves , as they were called in the film , but these were pretty much the only kind of waves ever shown in the whole movie . Obviously they are more dramatic to watch , but they are not a continually occurring phenomenon . Even worse , I noticed a few scenes where obscenely huge waves ( it is physically impossible for open ocean waves to be that big without a tremendous force like an earthquake , by the way ) were shown completely motionless for seconds at a time . It was like the wave was some huge solid form just under the surface , and the water was just running over it . And then there was the wave that broke and toppled the Andrea Gail over longways ( yes , I'm talking about the wave that George Clooney was screaming at ) . Waves just do not break like that in the open ocean , especially not waves as tremendous as that one . Basically , the storm scenes were simply exploded to impossibly huge proportions , which was one of the many ways that Hollywood manipulated this film . The other major problem concerned some of the things that were added into the story to make the film easier for a mass audience . ( spoilers ) This is not a happily-ever-after film , it's a true story . Everyone dies . So what they did was they had things like Bobby Shatford's ( Mark Wahlberg ) monologue to his distant future wife ( " . . . it's only love . . . " ) , and of COURSE , Captain Billy Tyne ( George Clooney ) deliberately allows himself to be taken down with the ship . How perfect . I'm not saying this didn't happen , maybe Tyne really went down as the traditional captain should , and maybe Shatford really did attempt a bit of telecommunication , but that is irrelevent . The point is that we don't know what happened , everything that you see in the second half of this film is pure speculation , and it is heavily sugar-coated , which bothers me . They even went to the extent of portraying the characters as though fishing was something that they needed just as much as food or water . Remember the scene when Cpt . Tyne says " Let's go fishing " as they are beginning their final fishing trip ? All of the guys get so excited that you would think they'd just heard that they won some kind of world sword-fishing championship . That scene , by the way , establishes the " they died doing what they loved " layer of sugar-coating . How sweet . I'll be the first to honor the reality of the tragedy portrayed in The Perfect Storm . In fact , the one Coast Guard paramedic that died in the rescue attempt , whose real name was Rick Smith , was a close friend of my father's the year before this mission took place . They worked together in the National Guard for years , they even shared a desk . When they were moved , my father was stationed in California and Smith was stationed on the east coast , where he soon received his fateful assignment . If it had been the other way around , it could easily have been someone portraying my father in this film . Clearly , I have a bit of an emotional bias toward this film , but I think that it was a little too excessive , particularly in the special effects department and the Hollywood sugar-coating . It's a great story and an entertaining movie , but I just don't think that it needed to be blown up that big in order to adequately portray the events that took place in the Pacific that year . |
543,824 | 562,732 | 23,669 | 5 | An odd little film indeed . | While claiming that this film borders on kiddie porn may be something of a stretch , it's not much of a stretch . It is certainly odd to consider the parents agreeing to let their kids perform in such a movie , which is racy , to say the least . The spectacle of Shirley Temple swinging her four-year-old hips around for a crowd of hooting four-year-old boys is disturbing indeed . This is one of Shirley Temple's earliest works for which the modern audience , or at least the few people who still manage or bother to see it , are most unimpressed , if not outright offended . The movie is a stark illustration of some of the difference between 1930s society and today's , as this film would not have the slightest chance of getting made in the 21st Century , and I like to see that I'm not the only person who's glad for that . Nonetheless , it seems that her appearance in this film , as well as the three that she appeared in previous to it , played a significant part in the explosion of her career as a child actor . Here's this girl who started acting at age four , stopped before her 20th birthday , and there she is appearing in all manner of glamorousness at the 1998 Academy Awards , four decades after her last performance as an actress . The extent of her popularity and success is clearly apparent , but this movie is more of a look at how differently movies were made in the 1930s as opposed to today , rather than an enlightening look at what it was about Shirley Temple that made her so tremendously popular . It seems clear that War Babies was an unintelligent film that exploited what must have been Temple's staggering cuteness . I can certainly understand that , because I have a sister who is 5 years old and she absolutely floors me , but the thought of her dancing around like Shirley does in this movie is not cute in the slightest . What is probably most odd about this movie is that all of the parents of the kids that appeared in it probably absolutely loved it . I imagine that not many of these parents are around anymore , so sadly it becomes all the more apparent as to why the film has such a small audience , and its obscurity I don't think can be chalked up entirely to the fact that it is more than 70 years old . Normally I am bothered by the fact that there are so many people in today's audience that refuse to watch older movies , simply because they are black and white . Imagine someone refusing to watch Schindler's List because it wasn't in color . Unbelievable . In this case , however , I don't find it upsetting in the least that this movie has become so rarely seen , because a movie that features a scene as disturbing as the finale of this one ( in which a little boy holds up an over-sized bobby-pin , making a genuinely disturbing implication to another little boy ) is not exactly a classic not to be overlooked . Quite the contrary . Overlook at will . |
544,659 | 562,732 | 74,080 | 5 | Not quite as pathetic as it looks . | The cover of ? Gator Bait makes it look like a ridiculous , mindless film with few redeeming qualities other than an abundance of inexplicable nudity . While there is nudity in the film ( and unnecessary nudity , at that ) , it is a relatively low quantity of it , and there are even a few elements of the film that were well done ? even if extremely few . The acting on all parts was just awful , but some performances were less idiotic than others . While it's true that the line ' Boys will be boys ' was uttered in response to an attempted rape , and one of the men attempting to capture Desiree actually SHOOK HIS FIST at her in one scene , it's not entirely the actors ' faults that this movie was impossible to take seriously . Nope , even if ineffectively , all of the actors delivered honest performances ? it's the SCREENWRITER that should be drug out into the street and shot . And the cinematographer was no genius either . The day-for-night photography was some of the worst I've ever seen ? even worse than that seen in Dr . No , which was filmed 14 years earlier than ? Gator Bait . Also , there is so much ridiculous dialogue in this movie that it becomes a form of comic relief in itself ( ' Leroy , you pick that boy up or I'm gonna blow yer head off ! ' ) . And I better not even get started on Desiree's laughable lines . It's no secret that ? Gator Bait is cheese . Everything about the film is ugly ? especially those damn actors . Some of these guys are so ugly that sometimes it's hard to believe that they're real people . But despite this , they make for an effective team of angry ( and excessively horny ) rednecks , and the way that they get picked off one by one by this country girl not only provides an ironic bit of an interesting story , but also illustrates the extent of their collective stupidity . In the final shot of the film , with Pa standing in the swamp , the camera tilts slowly down to his reflection on the water , providing an unexpected hint toward meaningful direction . But for the most part , this is garbage . You just can't take something like this seriously at all . Let me put it in the immortal words of the great Sam Gerard , ' Who's the ugliest , dumbest , most inbred country son of a bitch out here ? ' Well , whoever that person is , he or she is sure to get a kick out of ? Gator Bait . |
544,539 | 562,732 | 120,804 | 5 | Wow , I wonder what the video game's like . | So obviously I make no secret of the fact that I've never played the video game on which this movie is based , although I can't say it's that easy to come up with what the objective of a game would be that would inspire a movie like this . Not that I hated the movie or anything , but I think the story here would work better as a game than it does as a movie . First of all , the foundation of the story as a whole is based on a gigantic fallacy , or a series of gigantic fallacies . Specifically , the poisonous gas in the movie that basically reanimates dead people , turning them into flesh-eating zombies , supposedly works because , as it's explained in the movie , the body is still active even after death ( ' for months , ' one character explains ) . The problem here is that , while it's true that it is a widely accepted myth that hair and fingernails continue to grow after death ( also mentioned in the movie ) , it is not true at all that hair and fingernails continue to grow after death , it just doesn't happen . There is , in fact , a recognized postmortem lengthening of hair and fingernails , but it's not because they're growing , it's because the dead skin is receding , revealing the hair and fingernail material that was previously underneath the skin . So in a sense , hair and fingernails do , in fact , grow after death , but it is a result of the decay of the body , not in any way a product of still-functioning hair follicles and whatever the glands are that produce fingernails . Another reason that the movie gives for the ability of the gas to bring dead people back to life is that cells continue to reproduce after death . This may be true , but it would certainly never happen at the level required for a cadaver to be operational enough to be a zombie . Cells that have no incoming source of oxygen have a remarkably short shelf-life . So now that I've unnecessarily pointed out that logic has no place in this movie , I might as well point out that , for a horror film , the chronology of the plot is remarkably well thought out . I like that it starts with a couple elite agents who have lost their memories of what they have been doing and why they find themselves at the places where they wake up . Milla Jovovich plays one of these officers , and the other is supposedly her tactical boyfriend / husband is a life that she can't remember . As the film goes on and the cast find themselves deeper and deeper within this underground lab called The hive ( and more and more surrounded by the living dead ) , their memories gradually come back and they realize their old jobs , motives , etc . As far as plot , that is very original for a horror film , especially one involving zombies . You think of a movie that is centered around a gas that turns dead people into cannibalistic zombies and you immediately pretty much know how the whole movie is going to go . In Resident Evil , however , the majority of the tension comes not necessarily from the walking dead that are trying to eat the cast , but ultimately more from the awakening memories of certain characters who find themselves to be enemies , turning guns on each other even while the dead pound on the doors trying to sink their teeth into their flesh . Oh , by the way , that's another thing . Not only does this gas reanimate the dead by utilizing the fictional continuation of bodily function after death , but once turned into zombies , they have the ability to turn others into zombies with the slightest scratch or bite . So not only does this gas turn dead people into cannibal zombies , but cannibal VAMPIRE zombies . If they bite you you turn into one of them . No wonder they came up with the idea of internal strife as a way to create more tension , because the original premise of the effects of this gas are pretty ridiculous . It was created for military use , although I can't imagine a military use for a gas that , when used , would turn entire populations into walking dead , turning entire cities into the disaster that we see in the final shot of the film . Entire continents and , ultimately , the human race would be wiped out with a single use of such a weapon . Michelle Rodriguez takes on exactly the same role that she played in the ridiculous movie The Fast and the Furious as well as the somewhat less ridiculous S . W . A . T . She always plays a very impressive , very tough role , but her half-lidded tough-girl routine gets real old real quick . Milla Jovovich is just as staggeringly beautiful as ever , yet taking on another role that is fathoms below her ability , and really the rest of the cast kind of blends together , with no one standing out as important or with much of an impressive performance . Getting back to the story , like I said above , it's actually pretty impressive conceptually , but then again you have to overlook such forehead-slappers as the machine coming to life ( embodied , for some reason , in the voice of a little British girl ) , becoming self-aware , and trying to terminate the people there to shut her down . She apparently has managed to create a gigantic monster out of some sort of organic material the source of which escaped me , as well as whole herds of dogs that seem to have no skin and no other purpose for existing than to attack anything that moves . Cleverly animated , but certainly one of the things that raised a few eyebrows as to where they came from or what was the point . Recently I've been seeing previews at the movies for a Resident Evil 2 , which is most of the reason that I went back and watched this one . Based on the fact that this movie ends with a shot that is also seen in the trailer for part 2 , the shot with Alice ( Jovovich ) emerging from a manhole to find the entire city in a state of complete destruction , the gas having infected the population above ground , I assume that part 2 takes place in an above-ground setting . I also like that the preview starts off looking like an advertisement for some sort of beauty product , which leads me to believe that maybe that will be something that the dead use to cover up their deformities and the fact that they are dead , thus allowing them to sneak up on the living . Although if that happens , it would refute the claim made in this movie that they have no cognitive function other than the primal instinct to feed . At any rate , a fresh new setting , above-ground , would provide a whole array of new possibilities for a sequel to this movie . In fact , in order to save money , sort of kill two birds with one stone , they might even be able to double their profits by calling the next movie something like ' Resident Evil : 28 Days Later . ' |
544,312 | 562,732 | 349,889 | 5 | Who the hell marries their best friend's sister anyway ? | Unstoppable is one of those movies that people immediately attack , calling it Wesley Snipes descent into video land and such . These are not entirely unfounded arguments , but I have to suggest that the badness of this movie may be magnified at least a little bit because it is so overshadowed by Blade 3 which , given the previews , looks to be a spectacular action movie . I have a feeling that Blade 3 will be something of a minor letdown , in the same way that The Matrix Revolutions was ? not quite as incredible as you thought , but still a cool action / sci-fi movie . Enter Unstoppable , and you have a sometimes boring and sometimes downright stupid action movie being given to fans who are just looking for something to tide them over until they can get another dose of gleeful vampire bloodletting . The movie starts with a strange situation that turns into a good one . A bunch of guys have another guy strapped to a gurney in an ambulance racing down the street . The guy strapped down manages not only to kick the ambulance's rear doors open , but also to get away from the guys interrogating him , succeeding in rolling his gurney out the back of the ambulance , onto the road , and into the path of a tailgating truck . Oops . Pretty goofy , but at the later investigation , an arriving investigator finds out what happened and asks where the ambulance is , and learns that it didn't stop . I have to admit that's a pretty clever way to reveal that there were probably no EMTs in that ambulance . There is later another similar impressive scene when the one guy captured from the diner shooting finally decides to cooperate . He tells Amy , the interrogating officer , that he will cooperate only with her , after having refused outright during the interrogation room , and while now being led away by FBI agents . He yells to her that these guys are not FBI and he'll talk to her , and ten seconds later several people have been shot and he's dead . Doesn't sound very impressive in writing , but these are actually some pretty clever scenes . On the other hand , they are balanced out by some serious blunders , like the gigantic cliché of the rivalry between the police and the FBI . The only people who fight like they do in this movie are children , cats and dogs , and the FBI and CIA . Take the diner scene , for example . Dean Cage , played by Wesley Snipes and not to be confused with Nicholas Cage or Dean Cain , goes to a diner to meet his girlfriend after leaving early from a self-help group for war veterans suffering from post traumatic stress . Turns out he just went to the wrong diner and sat at the wrong table at the wrong time , because there are a whole group of guys outside waiting to drug and capture someone who looks enough like him for them not to be able to tell the difference . At first you may hesitate to believe that they could so easily misidentify their target , but the ineptitude with which they handle their operation allows me to believe all sorts of stupidity . One guy , for example , is so bad at being inconspicuous that Cage , while merely looking around waiting for his girlfriend , is able to spot him from inside a well lit diner while the guy is standing on the other side of the street at night . And if that wasn't bad enough , consider the sound guy , my favorite . After learning that his buddy has been spotted , he looks at Cage in the diner and sees that he is looking right at him , that he's been spotted , too . Hey buddy , this is just a suggestion , but maybe you were spotted because of that LASER-GUIDED MICROPHONE you're using . A laser sight on a shotgun microphone is about the dumbest thing I've ever heard of , but that's not enough for this guy . He has to train the laser onto the window directly in front of Cage , so that he glances casually at the window , wondering why there's a little red light dancing there . Given his decorated military background , I would have thought he would have reacted a little differently to a laser sight pointed at him . And the best part was that when he curiously tapped the window , the sound guy gets such a loud roar in his headphones that he just about falls out of the car . Wesley Snipes turns in a satisfactory performance , except for any scene where he thinks he's back in Bosnia and his friend is being tortured in front of him . His pleas for his captors to let him down and don't burn him and don't hurt him are about as emotional and frantic as if he was reading his shopping list . Is that really how he spoke to his captors when he was in Bosnia trying to get them to let his friend down ? On the other hand , his hallucinations were done quite well . Throughout the movie there are some good scenes put together where Cage slips in and out of reality , thinking that the guys trying to interrogate him in the present time are his captors from Bosnia . With the exception of the scene where his girlfriend disappears in front of his eyes in the shower ( I disappeared people on screen better than that when I was making short films at Fresno City College ) , a lot of these are actually done well . Outside of the mistaken identity , the plot revolves around a top-secret drug that makes people completely susceptible to suggestion and also causes total synaptic melt-down within 6-8 hours of injection . Cage was injected in the diner early in the movie , and spends the rest of the movie reeling from the effects of it , while his girlfriend Amy , a highly overacting Jacqueline Obradors , tries to figure out what happened and then get the antidote . The old premise of getting the antidote before the poison kills the hero is a recipe for fake tension , but the closing scene is actually done pretty well here , too . In the closing scene , the bad guy is also injected with the drug after the sale of a case of thousands of capsules of the drug and thousands of capsules of the antigen goes wrong . As Cage reaches for the single capsule of antigen on the ground in front of him , the whole case of the drug spills over , hiding it among thousands and thousands of capsules of the drug . Once the bad guy gets injected , he joins in the search , frantically grabbing handfuls of capsules looking for the right one , having forgotten that he has 6-8 hours before he really has to worry , as well as the fact that there is a huge case full of thousands and thousands of doses of the antidote sitting right there in his truck . Another thing that this movie really has going against it is that the action scenes are just ludicrous . At one point , a guy is in a helicopter shooting a freaking gatling gun at people . He literally shoots tens of thousands of rounds and hits nothing . Cage responds , shooting three rounds from a handgun and succeeding in killing the guy and blowing up the helicopter . At another point a guy fires an Uzi at Amy and Cage from probably six feet away , spraying a stream of bullets at them and missing completely , or at least long enough for her to grab a handgun and make short work of him . What was he shooting at that allowed him to miss from that range ? So clearly , the movie has a lot of really bad but also some pretty good stuff in it , just unfortunately not quite as much good as bad . The two almost balance each other out , but still leave it below average . It is not , I have to say , as bad as many people have called it ( the song over the end credits is worse than the entire movie , for example ) , but there is certainly a reason that it went straight to video . Maybe even several reasons . |
543,976 | 562,732 | 409,182 | 5 | Let me go , Bull ! ! | I think everything in my weekend led up to me watching Poseidon last night . First of all , ever since reading a fascinating novel called Shadow Divers a few weeks ago , I have been devouring every book and documentary and movie about submarines , shipwrecks , U-Boats , ocean liners , and other sea calamities that I could find . One of them , which I got my hands on two days before seeing this movie , was the original Poseidon Adventure ( 1972 ) , which surprised me in its lack of fundamental knowledge about how ships sink . The last thing I am going to do here is get all technical about the logistics of a sinking ship , I've seen some documentaries and read some books but am hardly an expert . Second of all , by pure coincidence , I went to Universal Studios Hollywood earlier the same day as I saw this movie , where I saw , for the first time , the Backdraft attraction featured there . The relevance comes up later . First a little background ? the Poseidon was struck by a very real but little known phenomenon called a " rogue wave , " which is essentially a mid-ocean , completely unpredictable collision of two massive ocean waves ( you would be absolutely astounded to learn how large and fast moving mid-ocean waves can be , by the way ) , which results in another wave , which you might say is more than the sum of its parts . This resulting wave , if it happens to form near an unlucky ship , say , an ocean liner , can literally be hundreds of feet tall and yes , roll a full-sized ocean liner upside down like a bathtub toy . But here's something curious ( which was wrong in both the 1972 version and the 2006 version ) ? after having been rolled by the wave , the Poseidon is literally hanging on the surface by this pocket of air in which the movie takes place . Thhe plot concerns the efforts of a small group of survivors to get to the top of the ship ( now the bottom ) , and somehow get through the hull to the safety of the open air . Now here's the problem that neither movie realized ? as soon as any hole was poked or opened into the hull , that trapped air would shoot outward with phenomenal force ( likely shooting any nearby humans through the hole and a good distance into the air ) . The 1972 version thought that they could just escape through the hole , but the 2006 version thinks that the propellers , which for some reason are still spinning hours after the ship capsized , could somehow shoot air INTO the hole . Yes , the propellers are powerful , and yes , a lot of wind would be created , but none of it would make it into the high pressure area where the characters are , but would rather blow right over the hole like it wasn't even there . On to the characters , because there is nothing to the story . Rogue wave hits ocean liner , a few try to escape , that's the whole story . A steadily shrinking group of white people trudge through hordes of corpses of black and latino people , trying to escape before the ship sinks . At one point , there is a tense moment where you don't know whether a gay man ( Richard Dreyfuss ) or a Hispanic man are going to be killed . I guessed the gay man , since there was no black character , who would surely have been killed first . It is in this scene that I suppose the current racial and sociological stratification of the Hollywood Movie is illustrated . Josh Lucas and Kurt Russell are our heroes , both of whom are forced to go through the standard disaster movie motions for the unmotivated director , who is a far better director than this movie allows him to demonstrate , as he has so many times before . Kurt Russell is one of those actors that people tend to either love or hate , like John Travolta or Steven Segal , but I have to admit that his presence in this movie is one of the best things about it . There is one scene where he is actually handed the opportunity to blurt , " It's okay , I used to be a firefighter ! " ( " You go ? we go ! ! " ) . An homage that he is later able to refute ( " Kick him loose ! " ) . There's lots of goofy romance and cookie cutter parental conflict ( Kurt Russell , Emmy Rossum as his daughter , and Mike Vogel as her boyfriend literally play exactly the same roles as Bruce Willis , Liv Tyler , and Ben Affleck in Armageddon , right down to the ending . The plot and character similarities are downright alarming ) . ( spoilers ) That all being said , the only thing left that I really want to know was what went on in the script reading sessions where , when getting to the end of the script , they read that the remaining characters escape the sinking ship seconds before she slips below the waves , they jump into the water and swim the ten to fifteen feet to the fully inflated , fluorescent orange lifeboat waiting for them ( incidentally the one , single thing left floating after the ships sinks ) , and fired off a flare from the flare gun which came with the miracle life boat , then sat back and grinned gleefully as the first flare they fired morphs into rescue helicopters . I admit that I enjoyed the movie , but it truly blows my mind that someone read that and said , " Yup , that'll do . " |
543,974 | 562,732 | 120,693 | 5 | Moronic comedy about a bunch of guys who try to bail a friend out of jail by selling stolen marijuana . | Half Baked is a drug comedy of the lowest order . It takes place in the all-American town of Anywhere , USA , in the mid 1980s , and concerns a group of pothead losers who come across a way to get their hands on huge amounts of marijuana , and use the opportunity to try to build up enough money to bail their pothead friend out of jail . Thurgood works as a janitor at a hospital and , as a result of having been asked to run an errand for a surprisingly generous scientist , has found a way to get his hands on a huge amount of the drug . It seems that his idiot friend Kenny was thrown in jail because in a stoned stupor , he fed all of their munchies to a police horse , killing it . He is arrested by a ridiculously emotional police officer ( a human one ) , and thrown into jail as a cop-killer . This provides the inspiration for the other guys to go out and sell enough of the pot to bail him out of jail , resulting in some cheesy and un-amusing comedy that would require some serious pot-smoking to enjoy . There is a surprisingly small amount of thought put into this film , but for obvious reasons , given the fact that its target audience is stoned . There is a painfully un funny scene involving stoned police officers , and the whole plot to bring down the big drug mogul was not much of an addition to this terrible film . The ending tries in pathetic vain to deliver some sort of positive message about drugs ( ' I love weed . but not as much as I love pussy ! ' ) , but fails miserably and only ends up making it look even dumber . Even the hilarious stoned acting of Jim Breuer as Brian ( ' I'm not gonna do what you all think I'm gonna do and just FREAK OUT man ! ' ) , got old well before the end of the movie . Luckily , it's no secret the kind of low brow comedy that this is , so you know from the moment that you pick it up that you're about to watch something totally brainless . Your best bet is to avoid it . |
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