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509,140 | 453,068 | 167,261 | 1 | The Trilogy continues , and it's just as good as the first . . . | . . . with even more action pumped in ; the final battle sequence is an astonishing feat from Jackson and his team , making an entire fleet of Urk-Hai completely computer animated , seem totally convincing . And while the second part is exactly as long as the first , it's even more eye-grabbing with it's visual wonder , the scope of Middle Earth the most impressive thing about Two Towers ( it's deserved of an Oscar ) . Another impressive feat is the computer animated creature of Gollum , a schitzophrenic , deformed Hobbit who finds Frodo Baggins his new master , alongside Samwise Gamgee , and he may just be the most compelling of the characters , along with the somewhat downsized role of Gandalf the Grey , er White , played still with skill by Sir Ian McKellan . So , for the fans of the Fellowship , and for Tolkien's core audience , they may find a few story strands missing from the original novel , but it is highly reccomended viewing anyway , and if those are concerned about not seeing a scene they visioned from the book , keep in mind that probably a year from now will see the release of the Two Towers extended edition on DVD . |
508,591 | 453,068 | 420,128 | 1 | a total contrived aberration of a TV movie , not because of its sincerity , but . . . well , maybe that is a big part of it | Riding the Bus with My Sister is a shameless attempt to put up such an insane sequence of events into a two-hour-plus-commercials time slot to total up to this : Beth ( Rosie O'Donnell ) is inspiring and courageous and livens up those lives of people around her , and anyone who doesn't see otherwise can shove it . But the opposite is true , particularly due to the performance , though the writing doesn't help . It's not within the power of a filmmaker to make something that doesn't draws the viewer compassionately in , as LONG AS it doesn't try and think the viewers themselves are , to use the word bluntly , retarded . But Angelica Huston , who doesn't seem to do her late-father proud when it comes to taking the director's chair , plops on the sentiment when really what is being revealed is the wildly contrived story of a control freak who's mean and annoying and , at the end of it all , unsympathetic . This might be passing a lot of judgment on O'Donnell's character , who was based on a real person , but it's not without some notice . Beth might be one of the most irritating characters in recent memory , in TV or elsewhere . This doesn't mean some ( totally unintentional ) laughs aren't to be had at the expense of the totally dingbat turn from O'Donnell . Maybe it's method , maybe it's just playing it in a very horrific one-note way , but she doesn't do anything to help make this big goose who doesn't seem to notice that the ones who point out that she's loud and obnoxious might be the correct ones . No , the point of view of the filmmakers control that more than anything , wherein it's all either black or white : either people really respect and care for her ( the black tae-kwan-do student who has the Isaac Hayes look is never explained really as to why he's with her aside from ' she makes me laugh , I love her , blah blah ' ) , or they're dismayed by her rude quality , like when she's at the cafeteria the bus drivers are at and , after the umpteenth time she's been there , is yelled at by one of the other drivers to get out as it's the BUS DRIVERS section . It would be one thing if the writer tried to make this as some legitimate dramatic scene , but it's all played up like " people just don't understand , " which is accentuated by the whole relationship between the two sisters . Now , it's not that McDowell doesn't try a little with the part , but what is there to be given to her anyway ? Her part is meant as a lazy counterpoint to Beth's half-crazy half-stupid mindset . She's a career woman who is a photographer ( not very well apparently , even when she makes " arty " photos in black and white ) , who puts aside her career , and her boyfriend , to stay with Beth after the death of their father . Rainman , however , this surely is not ; the story has very little in the way of actual development , except for the most base and totally , despicably predictable points , with O'Donnell grinding on through in a performance that gives cringe-worthy a bad name ( or a good name , I guess ) . Even the flashbacks are ridiculously inept at showing anything aside from ' I didn't really care for my sister then , and I should've , as it took my father about my entire adolescence to move out of the house ' , in a gray Flags of Our Fathers tint of course . This is all capped off with a final section where Beth tries to contemplate having children . At this point , against my better judgment , I soldiered on to the end , with rests on a shot of Beth , her sister , and the " hot " bus driver all in a goofy pose . If you have the guts to go through it , just make sure to know there's many " laughs , tears , hugs , etc " , complete with the sappiest guitar pluckings this side of Eric Clapton after watching a puppy die , and an atmosphere of total dread where there should be some rays of happiness for these people for the audience . No such luck ; it's a Hallmark movie at its most exploitative . |
510,649 | 453,068 | 57,181 | 1 | has inklings of potential , but it's all not there really , at all | What a title , it's the kind of title where if someone said it out of context of it being a movie I would have to say ' you said a mouthful . ' Here , I suppose it ranks alongside multitudes of other very long , very wild B , C , D , and so on movie titles that try and go even further with making the movie seem more creative than it really is . This is a particularly exceptional case then with the Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies . It's directed by Ray Steckler ( aka Cash Flagg , also as lead actor ) , who sometimes tries to put the camera in interesting ways with his asinine script . But even that doesn't work ; it's another case where he zooms in and out , and in and out again for dramatic , hypnotic effect , and it simply - for lack of a better criticism - stinks . But the material around it doesn't help much either , even if on a cheesy level there could be something in there to work with . Jerry ( Flagg , err Steckler ) falls for a burlesque dancer ( I'm reluctant to say stripper , matter of fact I'm reluctant to say dancer ) , but he doesn't realized she's connected with a hypnotist / gypsy woman ( an Elizabeth Taylor look alike , albeit with a mole ) who is changing people into zombies . Already there's trouble with the picture when early on it can't decide when to cut away from aspects of the carnival . We get it , they're on a roller-coaster , yippee . But that isn't even the most torturous parts ; more than half of the movie is dedicated to showing the acts on stage , usually very repetitive , boring dance numbers that have no continuity in the cutting and shots and sometimes even have the lights WITHIN the same shots , if that's explainable . There is also a ' big ' dance number that tries for the 50s studio glam , but again falls desperately short . Then come the scenes that are meant to be scary and hypnotic and terrifying - good lord . It's a combination of baroque camera set-ups that are un-workable , and still don't match up even when Steckler goes to show how Jerry is becoming a mixed-up zombie , or whatever it might be ( for much of the picture we get few , if any , zombies , aside perhaps from the hypnotist's assistant who reminds me of Anthony Quinn from Lawrence of Arabia with a horrible make-up job ) . So it's no wonder then that I really only got to the picture , and sat through it laughing all the way , thanks to Mystery Science Theater . There are actually some moments that I laughed at ( not with , mind you , as it's not really ' meant ' to be a comedy , I think , I could be wrong , even as the title is perpetually goofy ) , but without the three little commentators on the bottom of the screen I would've stopped it after about 20 minutes . Bottom line , the title's a keeper , but the flick comes about hair's length away from being a tumor . |
509,961 | 453,068 | 132,888 | 1 | to call it a turkey would be an insult to tasty poultry everywhere - shame on these directors | Yup , that's right , two people directed this . . . or so-called directed it . This is direction for the celluloid impaired , the likes of which only show up in the worst of Troma movies . It's about . . . . GOD ! Yes , you heard that right , obeying God's laws , and if not you'll take drugs as an addict , get hooked up with evil scientist turkey , and then in the midst of a hallucination turn into a turkey-head and attack the drug pushers that did this deed ! You dig ? Actually , don't dig , at all . This has moments of spontaneous hilarity in the worst possible way , but it's undermined by any and all attempts by its creators ( and future role model for Larry Bishop's Hell Ride , Steve Hawkes as writer / director / ego-maniac / turkey ) in making it a Reefer Madness style message movie about drugs and , eventually , God itself . Now some of this would be alright for some laughs ( lord knows how damn random it is to keep seeing the director , Grinter , pop up from time to time as a " narrator " who reads from the script as a would-be Bela Lugosi out of Glen or Glenda ) . And by the time the filmmakers get to the turkey headed creature-man-thing , looking like a cross between a discarded Skesis from the Dark Crystal and a Docor Who villain , one can join in the fun with the repetitive screaming sound effect and awkward edits . But really , it's just so poorly made - this kind of movie will make cinematographers ' heads spin perennially over how absolutely God-awful some of the shots are as being pseudo-documentary and pseudo-horror ( or , better yet , pseudo-suck ) - and acted ( everyone , from Hawkes to every single player , including two actors who look like they wandered off from the Allman Brothers band ) and plotted ( the ending , which provides a whole " It was all a dream " twist may be the most offensive thing of all ) , that you'll groan and feel completely sickened with yourself for watching what one hoped to be a ridiculous tongue-in-cheek turkey-killer flick . My advice , and I can't believe I'm saying this , go back and re-watch Eli Roth's Thanksgiving trailer . You get more turkey for your buck in a 20th of the time . |
507,901 | 453,068 | 60,666 | 1 | If you don't watch the film with the Mystery Science Theater 3000 commentary , you'll end up making your own . . . | ' Manos ' The Hands of Fate attempted something very few filmmakers have ever done before , and un-intentionally no less - this film goes below expectations , but not just any ordinary expectations . I knew right from the get go this would be a bad movie from the reputation it's garnered here on IMDb . However this takes the cake . It ends up being more embarrassing , more horrendous , and more offensive than anything cooked up from the Ed Wood school of low-budget , horror movie-making . On top of every performance ( even John Reynolds ' Torgo , who does pull off that insane servant look , despite no voice to match ) stinking to high heaven , every single bit of craftsmanship takes everything that was set up in the cinema world right out the window . The good news for people who wish to see it out of sheer curiosity is that it's now available from the Mystery Science Theater 3000 people ( as it has been for ten years , one of it's most infamous specials ) . Their commentary is a plus , and just when you think it can't get any worse , it gets funny by way of them . It's hard to heckle a film . This is the prime exception . All the music , the camera shots ( though , giving the benefit of the doubt , it's all shot with one camera getting 30 seconds at a time with no sound attached on location ) , the atmosphere , the flimsier - than - ripped - flip - flops storyline , it sets a standard that few movies can go to . Maybe that's its most impressive feat , that it takes itself so seriously as a legitimate , circa mid 60's B horror film , that it's fun just to watch and experience the depths it goes to . |
507,978 | 453,068 | 74,626 | 1 | a muddled merging of poetry and documentary ; a film that will hit , miss , or both , for its audience | Heart of Glass is a period piece , not merely because of its probable 19th century time period , but because of when it was filmed , what footage was used , the music , the " acting " ( appropriate in quotes ) , and the experimental attitude . Werner Herzog has always been one of the most unconventional and challenging of filmmakers - of himself and for his audience - but in this case his challenge almost becomes more of a gimmick . I wonder if my reaction to these non-professionals Herzog has here would be any different if I was not aware before that all of the actors were hypnotized , save for Hias ( who , to be honest , could've fooled me with how his ' performance ' goes ) . Maybe not by much ; like Jean-Luc Godard , whom Herzog once said is like intellectual counterfeit money , Herzog used his cast as much as gets them to be their unnatural selves by having them almost as mouthpieces to say his dialog , more leaning to being stylized poetry , as much as their sort of physical presence being controlled to the note . Also like Godard , he attempts to combine this with a technique in composition that merges documentary with a sensibility that is as well closer to a form of poetic , personal expression . Unfortunately like Godard ( I mean later Godard though ) , it doesn't really fly . It may for some , and in fact it's up there on lists of Herzog fans as one of the best . But the problem is that Herzog is so wrapped up in how everything should try to be in evocation and , in his own usually warped way , provocation , that its a style that can shut out the viewer from what should be a rewardingly hypnotic experience . But even if there was no knowledge of the hypnosis of the cast , things still feel off ; at times I almost felt like I was watching some demented hippie filmmaker from the period waxing and waning in 19th century garb about random intonations in nature or what the ' ruby glass ' has in significance , with stares and glazed looks and demented laughter . It's not un-merited for a man of such immense talent and artistry of Herzogs's to experiment and push the envelope of how a story can be told and how to get characters on screen in a way that is totally his own . The problem though , which is usually not the case particularly with his prime work in the 1970s , is to experiment without much of a real story to work with , or for that matter any characters to really give a s about . The main character , Hias ( Bierbichler ) , is the one who gets the town into its sort of madness , but I didn't even really get this sense until more than halfway into the film . By the end , even as Herzog's reached something of a quasi-resolution with the factory burning down , his message ( which does lie somewhere in the film ) about the beauty and dangers of a ' cult ' mentality lays in a muck of flat scenes of symbolism . Needless to say , however , Herzog tripping over himself , in my opinion , contains moments of wicked absurdity that are quintessential , and moments where the documentary style works strongest , as well as his ever strong eye for ' adequate images ' . Maybe the funniest scene , amid two cartoonish looking fellows sitting at a table , has these guys in a daze working out their issues with glasses of beer : one throws a glass at the other's head , without any response , as well as the other just dumping the beer on his head . A moment like this , or the scattered laughter during a botched glass-making attempt , rises to Herzog as a subtle master of weird comedy . It was also worthwhile to actually see how the glass-making process actually worked , as Herzog's eye for men in a physical act like this was pretty interesting . I even dug the whole fast-speed shot of the clouds running over the valley . But even in getting his footage of landscapes , some of it seems like it's aged , put to Popol Vuh music that accentuates its ' trippiness ' where it doesn't need it . And it's sad to admit that by having characters that give off a totally empty aura in exquisitely framed and lit compositions aren't a good match . For me , which it won't be for everyone seeing the film as some may be even more turned off by as being totally boring , which is sort of isn't despite its pretensions and for those who find in it great and moving art which is understandable , it's not a success . But as with directors like Lynch and Woody Allen and even Godard to a degree I'd rather watch a moment of stumbling than a complacent work by a hack Hollywood director . In the midst of the muddle , at the least , there are some bright spots of artistic expression . |
508,815 | 453,068 | 209,144 | 1 | Sometimes a little disorienting , but also compelling | This is not the most original idea ever . On an episode of Seinfeld , there was an episode where the story was told backwards and the reasons for one scene were explained in the next ( George feels sick in one scene , then we see in the next scene that right before that it was Clams Casino ) . So , I have a feeling writers Christopher and Jonathan Nolan and Director Chris knew what they were getting into . Still , it is as original idea I've seen for a movie since Being John Malkovich . Guy Pearce plays Leonard , a guy who saw his wife killed and then was struck with short term memory loss ( he explains everything fades ) , but then goes on a journey to find who the killer is . The story is told backwards though , so it is interesting to see who the killer is at the beginning ( and be killed ) , and then the events leading up to it . At times , particularly at the end , the film gets a little disconcerting , but it is also a well told story , with a fine lead in Pearce . |
508,607 | 453,068 | 235,686 | 1 | this would get a limp noodle if this was a XXX mag | Joe D'Amato might have made some other notable movies in his very long and very prolific career - prolific , of course , by turns of making VERY cheap Z-grade movies in Italy's big exploitation boom of the late 70s early 70s - but Porno Holocaust isn't one of them , or at least shouldn't be . Granted , I should not expect much from a movie with such a title , but I thought considering the back of the box's description that it might have some fun horror scenes with the " horny , mutant , cannibal zombie " . Turns out the zombie doesn't appear until more than halfway into the movie , and at every turn we get instead a tawdry sex scene as hardcore as one can imagine . Which is fine . But it's not very enjoyable , except in the most " what the f is this BS " kind of way . There's laughable dialog involving lobsters costing more from mail-order Japan than in Paris , hot , slim women play biologists and zoologists who have particular sexual hang-ups ( letting the door be unlocked to be raped , and a bi-polar kind of enjoyment out of getting gang-banged ) . It all leads up to the island , where the " main attraction " is a guy who early on just spends an absolutely pathetic ( forget ludicrous ) amount of time just staring at the newcomers to the radioactive wasteland of the shot-on-Caribbean island , and once revealed has a face like one of the guards in Jabba's palace and has a sweet potato for a main genital . But much dumber than anything before it is the " relationship " that develops between the monster and a dark-skinned lady who has an inordinate amount of time to escape , but just sits there , blank-faced , as the monster brings gifts and for what must be a racially-motivated exploitation move on the part of the filmmakers the monster ONLY rapes and kills the white women , and not her . And it ends , of course , with a " happy " ending . I use quotes , of course , out of a kind of shock that this could have any kind of legitimate ending at all . Bottom line , this is NOT what you might expect , as possibly being a bloody horror movie with plenty of tacky but cool looking Italian monster-zombies devouring human flesh . If anything what violence is in the film is done on a shoe-string ; a log hit to the face is immediately cut to the bloody aftermath , which is like the aftermath of a tomato hitting someone . So really , the last part of the title is meant more for market sake . Yet even as a porno movie it has little to go on except as a reason for the cast and crew to get a paid vacation to the Caribbean ( as an interview with George Eastman suggests , this was just one of a few quickies made while on the island ) . Its got penny-bought schlocky camera-work and similar actors , filled with genitalia about of the whole time and with wretched lip-syncing and music like Nino Rota forced at gun-point to make something snappy in a bordello , and it's STILL a piece of celluloid dung all the same ; all of this could be an immense guilty pleasure , but it isn't . |
508,745 | 453,068 | 421,054 | 1 | the worst thing that Tony Scott would ultimately want to hear about this film is that it's boring , but in the end it is | Boy , what a wreck to sit through with Domino , and I mean like a ship-sinking sized one . But maybe the only quasi-decent thing I can say about it is that I stuck through it , and didn't stop it or walk away mid-way through it . I knew that it would almost be sort of hypocritical to not finish watching the movie , just to see how far it could go into its own megalomaniac ego-trip of an " acid - punk - fever - dream - whatever - the - f " scape into movie-making this is . And I'm not sure how everything that could go wrong with a production like this does . Maybe there's something about it that has ended up appealing to some people ( Tarantino , who of course has an allegiance with Scott and some of the actors in cast here , listed it in his top films of 05 ) , but it just flew over my head . Or rather , it didn't , it went right into my senses and at first , I tried to find it OK . Then , it went through the Alex-in-the-Clockwork Orange chair phase . And then it became towards the end with the Las Vegas scenes something that ended up pushing it up into the list of the 10 worst films I've ever seen - and one that director Tony Scott wouldn't want to hear more than anything - it's boring . Because after a while such an onslaught of bombarding images , sounds , voices , editing as if - much as Suvari's character refers to Christopher Walken's character's attention span - a ferret was at the buttons , the tint on the camera , and all things considered , were monotonous to the point of inertia . But what's even more disappointing in that , as any filmmaker with talent , which Tony Scott has , can make material into pretentious rubbish ( just see Godard's last twenty years of work more or less to see that ) , is that there is potential here , in the cast and even in the script . Taking aside Kiera Knightley , mentioned below , there's Mickey Rourke , Delroy Lindo , Lucy Liu , and Walken too , who in the latter of the bunch in little spots does try and give some personality and humor - " what's with the font " . And ironically the script , by Donnie Darko's Richard Kelly , isn't the biggest problem here , at least not on the outset . If anything he starts off the film in predictable fashion like any self-respecting post-modern American action film would do in non-linear , start-with-a-bang style writing with a couple of bits of witty dialog . But in the end potential gets squandered , and what I was left with at least was the equivalent of a decent B-movie type of steak grilled into something incomprehensible . I wonder really if Tony Scott thinks he's making art here or a fun B-movie or more or what . Maybe it's the former ; he was a painter before a movie-maker . But the professional focus of previous action-film guilty pleasures like True Romance and Crimson Tide is lost within what he tries to do with the material . Did he think he was over-compensating for something , or that his style , or lack thereof , meant to heighten the experience for the viewer . I know what he was going for , in the style of something like Oliver Stone - or even in pushing the envelope forward in what he ( more successfully ) hinted at in Man on Fire . But style this flamboyant , cut-a-second , and really shallow and basically commercial ( he , too , was a director of commercials before films , see Top Gun for proof ) does not work with material that , as flawed as it is anyway , deserves some credibility . It's almost like Scott doesn't trust the viewer to just take the basics of the movie , so he overloads it , pushes the envelope , and at least by mid-way I knew it was going to backfire . With a cast like this too , you know there could be possibilities . Where else will you get in-jokes , or rather obvious ' ho-ho ' jokes with cast members of Beverly Hills 90210 ? However Scott combines his rambunctious , clickety-clack motions with his crew with symbolism possibly provided by the script ( goldfish as a metaphor for the loss of connected feeling , gimme a break ) , and with characters in all their shallow moves we're supposed to care about with relationships and meaning and such , with a leading lady that doesn't work , at all . Kiera Knightley is attractive , and is OK in some movies ( notably the Pirates of the Caribbean films ) . But here I just didn't see her in any kind of believable way as a bounty hunter . I saw her as Kiera Knightley . Even in a moment of peril where she lap-dances for gangsters just to get her man behind bars , it doesn't work . She collides alongside Scott's direction into the cataclysm that is the movie Domino , where lots of " cool " action and gun-fire and violence mixes with drug trips , underdeveloped characters , lots of " whoa-isn't that cool " style , and other things , until it becomes one of the great messes of the past few years . In short , and I rarely agree with Entertainment Weekly ( if they were the ones who said this quote ) , Domino is indeed trash imitating art imitating trash . And I sometimes really dig trashy films . But not when they're acting like they should be taken seriously . |
510,079 | 453,068 | 59,464 | 1 | barely watchable on it's own ; one of the MST3K's best commentaries though | Monster a Go-Go is one of those dreaded would-be drive-in cash-in movies that trying to watch it on its own is an act in futility . Trying to watch the moments of bad actors reciting bad dialog on sets loaned out by the director's mother and featuring the one hook as a 7 foot 6 inch man who's made to look TALLER in the ridiculous high-angle shots is excruciating enough . But then there's also the narrator sounding like he should be reading copy off of an industrial short on the history of buttons , the nearly inaudible dialog read in outdoor scenes , the random scene with the kids dancing at the hall to rock AND roll music , the atrocious ( let me repeat that , atrocious ) lighting where , as the Mystery Science Theater guys observe , their faces have been burned off , and an ending that wraps things up like a tarp scotch taped around a 400 pound dead guy who left this Earth by leprosy . It's a wretched work of science fiction that talks too much , doesn't walk the walk , and tries to compensate with lots of shots of tanks and army men and stuff cause , you know , that's impressive to the kiddies in these flicks . Luckily , Joel , Crow and Tom Servo are to the rescue with their commentary , and it is definitely one of the best that they recorded in the Joel era . Most comments are just plain silly ( their number with John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt , or just the echoing of the goofy sounds of the soundtrack are classic ) , but there are many a harsh , cutting word against the flick too . I loved just seeing how at the opening credits they acknowledged it would suck - " Hey , heh , hey guys , see Bill Rebane , two of them , shows up once , then again , and . . . oh this is going to suck " . It might seem a little biased that at the end , something unusual , they actually boo the movie ( not undeserved , but still ) , and up until before it ends keep asking when the hell it will end . But throughout I kept on either chuckling out just rolling-on-the-floor laughing at not just the specific little throwaway gags or lines that are too obscure for some , but just how it would match up to certain parts ( i . e . starts to fall asleep , Narrator chimes in , they all startle to wake up ) . |
509,927 | 453,068 | 116,756 | 1 | Shaq's egomania OOZES off of this movie ; a notorious bad kids movie , and not as campy as one would wish | Yes , Kazaam is one of those horribly bad movies that almost reminds one of everything that is wrong with not just kids movies , but with humanity . Here we have Shaq as a rapping genie - yes , a RAPPING genie - where he does everything from making bad puns to dressing in ridiculous outfits , all ending in him in a Christ-like pose with lots of light surrounding him . So , yeah , expect really cheesy bits , including the first wish being a lot of junk food falling down from the sky ( and , regrettably , not knocking out the two main characters , particularly the kid ) . What might not be expected is that a film with a kid and Shaquille O'Neill would be so incredibly schmaltzy ! The main plot of the film involves this kid , played in that all-too-typical and annoying-kid fashion by the great-grandson of Frank Capra ( where in which the kid is yelling out his dialog angrily ) , who comes upon a genie who's been trapped in a boom-box . Then " hiarity ensues " as the kid makes the Shaq-genie his quasi-slave as he waits on his last two wishes as he tries to make amends with his shady-gang-type absentee father . This really sappy , contrived son and father story would be bad enough , as there are certain lines that have been uttered in a million other movies ( i . e . the " two chances in life " speech from father to son ) . But it's Shaquille O'Neill who is both the reason to watch the film ( ironically ) , and the obvious sinking crux of it all . His plot line involves him , when not getting the over-talky treatment from Capra , to rap within the dialog and also start off his blossoming recording career . On top of this , he also kicks ass and takes names with the main bad guys who want him back in the boom-box . So is there a camp factor to the movie ? Up to a point , but this is even squashed by all of the mushy scenes and ' heart-felt ' moments that have really no business with the rest of the material . One might ask if the people making the movie , who were obviously doing it at the behest of the popularity of a BASKETBALL player who wanted to go on the Michael Jordan acting bandwagon , if it would be anywhere near decently entertaining or convincing . I'd hope that they too knew they were just getting paid . But I'd hope even more that they felt at least a little guilty afterwords for feeding the Shaq-machine . So , if you want to have a fun night of Shaq as genie - turned - rapper - turned - wisecracker , all the more fun to you . Hell , it might even be interesting to have a Shaq movie night with this and his other critically acclaimed effort Steel . But if you're hoping to keep a few brain cells , stay away from what is very likely the worst flick of 1996 , and a candidate among many others for worst of the 90's . |
508,235 | 453,068 | 396,269 | 1 | satisfactory romantic comedy , brings its laughs , and its predictability in tow | Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn , the stars bringing this vehicle to theaters ( there are other notables in the case , but not with the kind of draw of these two ) , are very talented , and usually pretty amusing . Wilson , for my money , is the subtler of the two , and is more of the leading man , while Vaughn is usually over-the-top in his double-talk , and garners some laughs even when some fall flat . They take the film Wedding Crashers and make it watchable , along with some supporting actors playing strange characters . It's not as wild as one might expect from the trailers , and as a ' date ' movie it's rather predictable . The opening twenty minutes is close to genius , by introducing the audience into this care-free , inspired montage of Wilson and Vaughn crashing the weddings , enjoying the celebrations , and going to bed with many women . It's not laugh out loud funny , but it garners a few small laughs , and it a very good set-up for what seems to be a film in this vein . It's not quite the case - we get a story that sort of goes on auto-pilot ( to put it another way , I've seen a story like this many times over in mainstream romantic comedies ) wherein Vaughn gets dragged into staying for a day with the daughter ( Isla Fisher , perhaps the best overall funny performance ) of the Secretary of Treasury ( Christopher Walken , of all people ) , and Wilson goes along as he tries to woo another daughter ( Rachel McAdams , a beauty no doubt ) who is already in a relationship with a alpha-male guy ( Bradley Cooper ) . This is when formula takes over . While the laughs are there , including a crazy dinner scene ( it's like a 30's screwball comedy crossed with American Pie for this scene , one of the funniest ) , a demented quasi-rape of Vaughn on his first night at the Clearys , and some other amusing parts sprinkled throughout the film , there are flaws . For one , it does go a little longer than it should - a couple of scenes could've been cut , or at least trimmed . At two hours , a romp of a romantic comedy shouldn't feel this over-long ( a lot of it for the story of Wilson and McAdams ' characters , who have good chemistry , but don't have much room to go in the formula ) . Another problem is under-developed , or non-developed characters . Take the character Cooper plays , Sack - he's been with Claire ( McAdams ) for over three years , and yet she is everything that he isn't . He's a one-dimensional villain , someone who is so obvious that it doesn't leave much room for conflict or second guessing about where the film will go . This goes for the Walken character as well , who seems mis-cast in a film where his odd comic genius and timing could come in well , but he doesn't bring much to the table aside from maybe one laugh ( perhaps not intentional ) . Ironically , two characters who score a lot of points when they appear on screen , Will Ferrel as the Wedding Crasher legend Chaz , and Keir O'Donnell as the closet-freak / brother Todd , get very little time to bring funnier bits ( they're stuck , again , in the traction of the screenplay , who do what they can in the time given ) . Wedding Crashers did give a couple of surprises , and it is gleeful , dumb fun for most of the way . But when it comes to the last quarter it starts to drag , the laughs become more diminished , and it becomes more of waiting for the last scene than being entertained . The whole aspect of the lying theme of the film fits in , yet really as story devices . In short , it's a film that brings in its moments well , and gives some good room for Wilson and Vaughn to work in ( Vaughn , whom I've always gotten the least of laughs in the pack of Wilsons , Ferrell , and Stiller in their films , actually makes good on a lot of the set-ups and pay-offs of the absurdities ) . But the script and actors tend to stumble as much as they make it entertaining . or a |
510,865 | 453,068 | 126,916 | 2 | easily the worst film Sam Raimi has directed yet | I remember seeing For Love of the Game in the theater and thinking ' this isn't the same Sam Raimi that directed the Evil Dead trilogy and A Simple Plan , is just can't be . ' It's one thing that it's a Kevin Costner movie , which in and of itself carries a certain formula that can take down director and ship with him . Maybe there might be some even die-hard baseball movie fans out there ( baseball itself is cool , the movies from that can either hit or really miss ) who might appreciate this film , but as that and as a romantic melodrama it's just , well , a shamble of formula , over-sentimentality , and over-wrought dialog . Some of the supporting acting isn't too terrible , as John C . Reilly and JK Simmons are usually hard to disappoint . But it's practically humorless , and ( this is a bit subjective here ) can be somewhat incredulous against Yankees fans . The premise itself could've worked - aging baseball pitcher does a perfect game while his romantic life has a checkered past . But Raimi isn't able to breathe that much life into the script , and the Hollywood feel of it just adds to its , well , blandness . It's not one of the worst movies of 1999 , but it's a definite yes that I would not only not recommend it , but would steer clear of it if it came on TV again . Maybe as a piece of fluff it might just be a below satisfactory effort , but from Raimi it's emanates from me a big " huh ? " |
509,698 | 453,068 | 299,981 | 2 | not at all undeserving of its straight-to-Sci-fi-channel-status | I just looked back at my notes on Highland : Endgame , still the only other Highlander movie I've yet to see ( also never seen an episode of the show ) , and an a little surprised at how high it was rated then even at a grade . I must have reacted to the final battle scene between Adrian Paul and Christopher Lambert , which is the only thing I can even recall from the one time seeing the film , and finding it kind of cool in a cheesy , disposable science-fiction flick manner . But the fact that it is so forgettable shouldn't be taken for granted , at the very least in what has come AFTER THE ENDGAME ! According to a friend each Highlander film gets even more disconnected and continuity confused than the last , and The Source is probably one of those textbook examples of a story being simply way too confusing for one who isn't at least a little familiar with the franchise . And at the same time , seeing it tonight on the Sci-fi cable channel , it's not totally out of place , and maybe not quite as offensive as some of the product made right in their home premises . But it's still a waste of any viewer's time , even for die-hard fans . The only real value at all to be taken from the movie , and there is maybe a little bit , may be in aspects , in parts , of craftsmanship , like the make-up on Pyramidhead and the cinematography , the latter calling into mind ( oddly enough as I'm not kidding ) Pan's Labyrinth , of course without much at all of the power of the context that film had in style and substance . But once that is past , then one is left with direction that seems to come out of a school that is based entirely on a time when MTV still made music videos , with touches of would-be 300 knock-off thrown in either as unintentional or as sucker-punching for genre fans . And acting that is just fair at best and atrocious at worst ( Adrian Paul can act , says who ? And the guy that plans the Pyramidhead , what gives ? ) But what made it most incredulous was the editing ; since the story is filled with many a cliché ( dying man gives his long monologue to teary-eyed hero , longer monologue from a disgusting creature about what is to come in the rest of the story , sex scene between hero and girl after a heart-to-heart , final duel , et all ) , the editing should at least try for professionalism of some sort . Not so . This director / editor team is about as toxic as Steven Tyler and Joe Perry in a 1978 hotel room loaded with five 8-balls a piece and a one hooker between the two of them . Often during a fight the characters will be shot as if in slow motion and SPED up , and then back and forth as if there isn't any conviction in just seeing simple fight choreography . But worse are the montages - aside from Bratz , which is in a league of its own , this is some of the just , well , inept editing I've seen in many a moon , particularly at the beginning and end where it seems as though nobody even watched the fing last ths of the movie that came before or after it ! The music is also another kicker to go with the director's scheme of assault on cinematic style . By the time it ends - which seems to be longer than it really is despite the long commercial breaks . The only good news that can come is that The Source has now been reached , and the series can now end , like another beheaded immortal or whatever the hell . |
510,977 | 453,068 | 55,452 | 2 | not made to be a bad movie , it just is , though not really ' classic ' bad | Edward D . Wood Jr ( or E . D . Wood credited for the film ) is practically revered today as a filmmaker forgotten and neglected in his time as just another Shlock-Meister of B-movie ( or Z-movie ) cinema . His legacy is now , well , being the ultimate in bad schlock kind of movie-making , where you can almost see the sets about the tear at the seams , the actors going through their lines like they know they won't get any pay for it , and camera-work ( and perhaps editing too ) that becomes jarring in the worst possible ways . While the Sinister Urge , Wood's last ' real ' film before diving deep into obscure porn directing ( ironic considering the film's subject here ) , does not have a kind of classically bad way about it like Plan 9 From Outer Space . That film has since become a kind of cult classic where the actor in place of the late Bela Lugosi in the film , the various props and sets ( including the ' saucers ' ) , and horrendous narration becomes most of the ironic fun . The Sinister Urge in comparison doesn't have that impressive ambition to be something more than it can never be , as this film is nothing more than an under-cooked ' warning ' film about porn movies , and the people who may kill to be apart of them . The Sinister Urge is 71 minutes long , which doesn't overstay its welcome ( though one may try and define ' welcome ' with an Ed Wood picture ) as a film with many static camera angles and very few moments of ingenuity . One of those - the scene where the brakes don't work with the car - is ironically successful , as it really shouldn't be at all workable as a scene , but as a little piece of suspense it could be worse . Most of the rest of the picture isn't so lucky - again , many , many actors who seem like they are not only content to not become stars , they're almost doomed to be in pictures like Wood's . Often the performances are wooden , but of course part of the real problem with watching such actors is the often silly dialog . It tries to be ' realistic ' , but Wood has no gripe with stopping somewhere to have a character ( usually the lead cop character ) to lay out a dull speech about the message of the story . On top of the story not really being too coherent , anyway , the director's method of the ' cut , print , perfect ' method can be seen quite often with some laughable mistakes abound . Now , does all of this make the Sinister Urge as astoundingly , amusingly bad as Plan 9 ? Not really ; there's nothing too memorable about how the film is bad here , unless you're a die-hard fan of the director . He does try here and there to keep some storytelling merit , with his style being so uncomplicated and static it shows his ambition . But the lack of talent overcomes everything else , not to mention the cardboard-sided points of the film . It's also not too unworthy of the Mystery Science Theater 3000 treatment either , which has now made the film available on DVD . The commentary is spot-on usually and funny , though as with Plan 9 you may still want to make wisecracks on your own . That's Wood as the mustached guy who fights at the Cafeteria in one scene . |
510,589 | 453,068 | 403,703 | 2 | I walked out , sad to say but it's true | Suddenly this movie came back to me in a flash - of what I tried to watch of it , anyway . At the time I actually saw it in the theater ( snuck in of course ) , hoping maybe that the film might be slightly different from the one-sided approach on the TV show that makes Pokemon look like Miyazaki . I knew that there was also a whole big trading card side to the whole shebang , but that maybe the filmmakers might forgo that for an actual story or at least one or two characters to have some sort of interest in ( at least in Pokemon there was the villains out to stop Pikachu and those other kids ) . After about 30 minutes of the film , I started to get the same sensation I felt having seen Digimon in the theater years before - the sensation of being numbed by over-the-top , hideous displays of anime via lots and lots and lots of battles between characters that I couldn't give a hoot about . So much is invested into making the card-players with their animals fight off incredibly stylish and colorful , which here and there it was , they forgot that they're making a movie . If it was something just short and small to show at an anime or comic-book convention , fine , but not for 90 minutes ! After said 30 minutes , I did a rarity on my part which was to walk out , feeling that even though something was sort of going on with the character of Yugi - going into Egypt for some rare creature to face off or whatever - there wasn't anything really to see more of that I didn't already get bombarded with already . It's got more flashy gimmicks than a magician hopped up on 10 cups of Starbucks , but nothing really goes on that redeems all of this with content . For the fan-boys of the series or the cards or maybe for the most die-hard of ( KIDS ) anime shows and flicks it might be worth a look , or a glance , though its current status on the IMDb bottom 100 is not really without merit . Pretty disposable as I remember it . |
510,222 | 453,068 | 403,885 | 2 | might be the worst zombie movie I've seen in a very long time , and I've seen Zombi 3 | I'm reminded while watching Death Valley : The Revenge of Bloody Bill on the sci-fi channel something George A . Romero said recently about certain new horror directors : " They shot Faith Hill's last music video , and they think they're hot s . Do they know how to handle it ? No , they don't . Put ' em at an editing table , and they're clueless . " Although Byrum Werner ( maybe the coolest name for an exploitation director , I'll admit ) probably hasn't done a Faith Hill video , the comparison can still apply . Werner shouldn't be directing anything remotely related to celluloid , from seeing the catastrophe that is ' Bloody Bill ' , as he tries to compensate for a rote and crappy script with much worse ' style ' . Maybe it's a personal thing , but it's a pet peeve for me when a director uses a specific tint for a purpose that is completely ancillary , where it's more about calling attention to itself than serving any meaningful stylistic choice ( Spielberg may be the only one who can get away with it ) . In this case , Werner uses it to the point of total madness , and not good madness : the tint is actually a lot of the time just on the top part of the frame , making it a foolish distraction . This goes without saying that the whole color scheme in general , whether applied by Werner himself as DP or in post , is annoying because it makes it obvious that he doesn't trust anything regarding the actual space being used , or maybe using some natural light or shadows to make atmosphere , instead of splashing on this crude red - often in a blurred vision ( FOCUS ! I screamed more than once ) . Don't even get me started on the editing in many instances , where random montage and action is cut as if by an epileptic puppy . The story itself is rote anyway : a bunch of teens riding out in the desert get car-jacked ( ! ? ) by a black guy who leads them to the ghost town of Sunset Valley , overrun by ( usually ) running zombies led by Bloody Bill , who has a vendetta against someone done wrong by someone and blah blah blah . Point is , a lot of this , however just totally ludicrous it all sounds ( Bloody Bill's a confederate - no Yankees or blacks after all ) , could just be moot if it was at least a halfway decently acted or technically executed effort . It's not , at all . Watching Death Valley is like getting a checklist for things that could possibly go wrong for a movie and do , over and over again . The music is fourth-rate metal garbage on loan from the boys who've been practicing in the garage next-door ; the " performances " are from nobodys ( Gregory Bastian goes to lengths to be a bad-ass mutha , but is one of the most ineffectual I've seen in recent memory ) , this including Bloody Bill's ' actor ' who is barely on screen at all ; the gore and violence is directed amateurishly , with tomato-sauce blood and eye-liner used for added " effect " during the transformation from living to dead ; even the production design , with the sign changing from time to time from 99 to 107 from start to finish is cheesy in an unforgivable way . It works only up to a completely ironic point ; make sure you've got the right friends and good booze lying around and it should make for a chummy Saturday night movie . But good lord , don't go into it expecting any semblance of an entertaining B-horror movie . It's drek of the shlockiest order , and I'd have to be paid more than the actors themselves were ( if they were that is ) to sit through it again . |
510,472 | 453,068 | 843,873 | 2 | it barely qualifies as a guilty pleasure ( mostly for its climax ) | I would probably want to give this movie a zero if not for the climax , which involves not really Snakes on a Train , but rather Train IN a Snake . The premise was cooked up far more than likely over the course of a night of beers after hearing about Snakes on a Plane in production ( this , in fact , was released to coincide with that film's release ) . The joke is probably not lost on those who will seek this out ; I don't think there would be a soul out there who would consider this anything as a serious action-thriller effort ( unless on an ironic level beyond the capacity for rational thought ) . It's about a Mayan curse placed on a woman who's damned by her family for leaving with another man , and is soon seen sickened and coughing up green slime laced with , of course , snakes . She and her beau go on a train headed for Los Angeles , and very soon after the more-than-cliché characters are privy to snakes overtaking the train - with the originator woman becoming a snake herself . If it would be worth listing more about the movie I would , but there isn't enough time during the day . All that can be said for the quality factor is that it's almost on-existent ; there are student short films with larger budgets . Maybe that was a wise calculation on the filmmakers ' end , that there would be so many copies sold , just for the joke factor alone , that they would re-coup their budget in the first weekend . Because by looking at the sets ( the trains themselves change randomly in the middle of a scene ! ) , the actors ( if you can call them that , with only one other actor - the one with the very thin hair who hits on the one woman throughout the movie - who benefited from the flick being produced ) , the FX ( also next to non-existent , making the effects in Snakes on a Plane seem like Star Wars ) , and the actual CGI snakes themselves , with the final huge behemoth snake something to behold in sci-fi movie channel terms . This all means , basically , that it is a laugh riot every step of the way ( especially , as cruel as it sounds , when a little girl becomes involved in a snake's " attention " ) , with the very disregard for good taste working well in its favor . This being said , it is also 100 % disposable , like a B-movie sour-flavor lollipop . |
509,916 | 453,068 | 763,304 | 2 | fantastic for laughs - for all the unintentional ( ? ) reasons - though lacks things like texture and quality . . . | . . . which is fine . Doogal probably wouldn't of caught my attention in the slightest - and I barely took a glance to it when it was first released ( or escaped ) into theaters last year . But then when I saw Jon Stewart's credits on this site , his name popped up for this movie . I clicked it and was momentarily horrified : Jimmy Fallon , Ian McKellan , Judi Dench , William H . Macy ? One of these does not belong ! So after some head-scratching I watched it more as a goof than anything with friends . Boy , oh boy , you don't quite know what you got till it's gone , so the song goes . Doogal is an American re-dubbing of a movie that was in English ( and , apparently , featured Bill Nighy in the now Jimmy Fallon role , which is completely inexplicable and even offensive to Nighy fans ) , and not even a GOOD re-dubbing : the dialog most of the time doesn't match up at all , and one character , a moose ( voiced by Kevin Smith - as a favor to the Weinsteins to be sure ) , barely opens his mouth . It's got a good guy and bad guy that are springs ( with Stewart playing one of them , in maybe the most ironically cool part of the miasma ) , tired and old-hat pop-culture references left out from the 90s and elsewhere , which come at every turn possible , and has animation that might look decent if this were a ) on the Nick Jr channel , or b ) a video-game created for kids who are playing their very first video game . As entertainment , however , it is meant to be a goofy journey to get three diamonds to free a bunch of kids frozen in a carousel while Zeebad ( Stewart ) plots to get the diamonds to freeze the sun ( albeit no one seems to notice that Zebadee , McKellan's spring , lacks to know-how to use his mustache - yes , his mustache - to thaw out the youngsters ) . It's such a poorly run ship you wonder if people really lost their jobs over it ( or if the Weinsteins got stoned out of their gourde with the re-writers after green-lighting the re-dubbing ) , and , ugh , I haven't even gotten yet to mention the sexual tension between a caterpillar and a cow ! So , in a way , the movie is actually really funny and spectacularly campy in the way that one might see in an old AIP release from the 60s or 70s . Only difference is , this is supposed to be a legitimate CGI movie for kids ! This being said , actors like Macy and Stewarts ( maybe not Goldberg , who knows ) took on the project knowing what they're getting into . Needless to say , if any good could've come from it , the spring has been mentioned often in splendid self-deprecating ( and self disbelieving ) manner by Stewart on the Daily Show . |
508,775 | 453,068 | 477,785 | 3 | she should have just done an interview , not a movie that screams pretension like no other | I know Guy Maddin directed this short film , My Dad is 100 Years Old , but either acclaim or blame should be rest on Isabella Rossellini's shoulders for this . She knew what kind of picture this would be , and Maddin seems more like a hired hand here than a true visionary . And if anything , the vision of sorts is really distracting and unnecessary and is just really poorly done . I know the intentions are good , and if I had to rate just on intentions it would be much higher praising , albeit in such personal terms . Roberto Rossellini is a great filmmaker , one of the greatest that emerged once the smoke settled from World War 2 in Europe . And his films Open City and Paisan are films that should be rediscovered for years to come as technology overcomes the film industry ( even if it's just in museums ) . But one of his daughter's , Isabella , hasn't done the greatest of tributes , from my perspective , with her My Dad is 100 Years Old short film . There isn't really anything coherent to the picture , which might have been acceptable had it been maybe more focused , so to speak . What I mean is the same pretension that she seems to be commenting on ( although too little too late by the last shot when she calls for the camera to move in front of her directly in profile ) , and done with a very ' this is how it is ' take on things . She makes fun of Fellini and Hitchcock ( the latter in profile , the former played by her ) , as Rossellini himself - or the form of him as portrayed by a huge belly that Isabella recollects was what she remembers the most - rags on anything in cinema that doesn't address morality and the like . Only when Chaplin comes out - also again Rossellini herself playing her along with David O Selznik - does some praise come out . For a film that lasts only 15-17 minutes , it seems like it fills up its time much too smugly and with an air of content at being all over the place . It's interesting to see how the rest of the picture , with its obtuse camera angles and pompous style of editing and framing and dialog , compares with the few precious clips of Open City that are shown , and how more insight into the director is in those clips than in everything else his daughter shows . Now , in full disclosure , I do like Isabella Rossellini a lot , as an actress , and she is a beautiful woman , but taking the controls on a complete tribute project like this nears all too much to the point of disaster . We get a view of a man who is simply all alone , out-casted by a film community that once embraced him , and sullen by the fact that people don't care about his movies after a while , or the kinds of stories and characters he wants to portray . It sounds really good on the outset , but it's not what I thought it would be when I finally saw it - a mess . I would have much rather had seen a full-on documentary on the director instead of some avant-garde deconstructionist short film . A big disappointment from a big fan of the director . |
510,285 | 453,068 | 213,895 | 3 | not surprised it never got much at all of a theatrical release | The Moving Finger , the ' plus ' feature on a DVD featuring Brian De Palma's Murder a la Mod , was made by Larry Moyer , a strictly independent / B-movie director who apparently never really directed again after this ( he has one animation co-direct credit on a short ) . Not too surprising why ; his film is a blend of even-for-then tired clichés between a heist plot and the swarm of the Beats down in the Village in the late 50s and early 60s . It's about a bank robber who gets shot , and is somehow able to make it on a bus down to Greenwhich village and hide out among a group of bum-beatniks who are allowed to stay as long as they appease the man who owns a dingy poetry club ( gravely voice Lloyd Stander , like Mickey from Rocky with " poetry in ' im " ) . Not much happens really , and despite Moyer's attempts to capture some reality of the squalor of the village scene at the time he doesn't get enough . He's tethered to a bad plot with crummy actors ( save for Barry Newman , star of Vanishing Point , who oddly enough is here almost as a goof in the midst of the " tea-heads " ) , and long stretches of dancing and dialog to B-movie music that doesn't stick well . With more creative direction , and maybe more of an attempt to go with style as do the poetic bums of this world , this premise could have some lift . As it is , it's barely a half step above Mystery Science Theater status . It's not a movie to seek out specifically if you've never seen it , and I wouldn't go out of my way to watch it again if I rent the Murder a la Mod DVD again . Only redeeming quality is a scene with a cockroach race . |
510,258 | 453,068 | 897,361 | 3 | pretentious twister of a horror-thriller , it won't kill Lohan's career , but it's a definite blotch | I Know Who Killed Me , written and directed by two first-timers respectively ( the director has done a couple of ultra low-budget horror efforts , seen only in festivals ) , is the end result of the two of them ( and the producers more or less ) watching much too much of the series Twin Peaks and the film Fire Walk With Me without really understanding the symbolism exactly . It's a mystery of a mystery , and it involves stigmatic twins , owls , severed limbs , and severed finger , and a killer who may have escaped from the Blue Man Group and was forced into appearing in this film . Lindsay Lohan , attempting to dig deeper than ever with her acting talents ( and for all of her debauchery and self-destruction off-camera she does in fact have a little talent , seen most prominently in Prarie Home Companion ) , portrays Aubrey / Dakota as a woman / women torn by fragmented memories and a life that's as pulpy as a rotten orange . To go into the plot too much might not exactly be spoiling but merely too disengaging : Aubrey , the girl who's the ' normal ' one , goes to school , is smart , has the cute boyfriend , disappears one night , is gone for three weeks and is discovered on the side of the road missing a leg and a hand . In the hospital she also says she is not Aubrey but Dakota , a stripper who's mother was a crack-head and has no social security number . The twists that perpetuate go on until the very end , which soon becomes less confusing and just plain stupid . The condition that Aubrey / Dakota has is explained thanks to an Ask . com entry with a weird man explaining it behind a space-like background . Meanwhile , the director goes to town in illuminating the harsh and would-be surreal psychological states with the color blue . It's a motif that not only falls flat on itself , but becomes part of the unintentional humor abundant in the film . The action veers towards Evil Dead parody , with one shot reminiscent of the classic line " Groovy " , and there's even one sequence that looks ripped right off of the dream scene in Vertigo , right down to the music . Like The Number 23 , the filmmakers attempt at subject matter meaning to be provocative and dramatically tense all the way , but the concepts don't fly by because of a lack of solid skills ; with the millions of dollars at the disposal of the crew , why should there be scenes where shots are out of focus and without any significant stylistic effect . How do we care about someone being tortured if it veers into looking like a short film shot by an over-ambitious teenager with a camcorder and a penchant for Tony Scott ? As for Lohan , who goes into her role as if it's both The Parent Trap ten years after and a revisionist take on Laura Palmer , it's not exactly a horrible performance in corresponding with not exactly a failure of a film . The problem is that any skills that she puts into the scenes are faltered on the material , and on her lack of experience thus far in tackling more complex subject matter and a character who - had it been under a possibly more competent filmmaker - could be demanding of an emotional upheaval . The scenes where she strips ( and a stripper who , as did Jessica Alba in Sin City and Natalie Portman in Closer , is more of a go-go dancer as opposed to a classic striptease artist ) are muddled and sluggish , if looking objectively , and it just adds to the exploitive aura of the whole picture . In fact , it probably serves best , particularly if one is going into it looking for unintentional humor ( if you're a Twin Peaks fan as well it's likely to pop up every other scene at least ) , as a low-end exploitation flick that doesn't serve much purpose on anyone who worked on it in the future . Maybe they'll go on to better things , but for now it's sub-par . |
509,960 | 453,068 | 831,887 | 3 | the Howard the Duck of the 21st century | What exactly goes on in Frank Miller's mind I cannot truly say . Whatever it is , the creator of two or three of the most influential and artistically challenging comic books ( Dark Knight Returns and it's better sibling Batman : Year One plus Sin City at its best ) has over time lost his mind - or maybe hubris and fame have gone to his head . He does have a vision , I'll grant him that . Maybe next time he'll just stick to doing his comic-book version of it instead of trying to go-for-broke as a first-time solo director ( and depending on point of view on his credit on Sin City it's his first time directing period ) . Here's what Mr . Miller does : he takes one of the most beloved comic strips ever created - Will Eisner's tongue-in-cheek series of stories surrounding Denny Colt , aka the Spirit , who fights crime and tries his best to protect and help out citizens who get themselves into extraordinary circumstances . It was light but dark , funny but serious like any great pulp story , and Eisner was a pretty darn good artist to book . He takes this series and transmogrifies it , morphs it , shreds it into a thousand pieces and puts together what he thinks makes sense or looks or sounds cool or weird or different or plain sexist or , ultimately , " colorful " , and made a film . This isn't the same as a comic-book , where doing a spin on the Spirit in his universe might have been interesting , if only on the basis of his drawing work being incredible . No , instead we're treated to a movie plot that skips around maniacally in a universe that Miller has transformed in unnecessary darkness and just plain old " what-the-f-ness " , where characters neither look the same ( the two biggest examples being Denny Colt's classic blue blazer being made black since , apparently , Frank Miller only knows black and red and a kind of off-turd brown , and making the main villain , the Octoupus , a character not of the shadows as in the comic but decked out like a Dick Tracy villain on crack with Japanese and Nazi dress codes played by Samuel L . Jackson ) , sound the same ( I don't remember this much cursing or nudity or even dialog this crappily campy ) , or move the same ( basically , a lot of fight scenes are derivative of anything from the Matrix , which was also DP'd by Bill Pope , to Sin City itself ) . While it's not a prerequisite to be faithful to the source the whole time , it certainly can help to at least have a comprehension of what the author's intent was with the material . And yet , this own mis-comprehension of the source material for Miller provides him with ample opportunity to do crazy warped stuff just to see if he can pull it off , and it turns into a series of acts that are like sideshow attractions between freaks and the Grindhouse . Perhaps that's why this isn't one of the absolute worst films I've ever seen and just one of the stinkers of the year : Miller has many scenes here , like with the completely inexplicable Nazi stuff ( where dialog ranges from " Dead as Star Trek " to something to do with ' frozen beagles ' ) or that one henchman who becomes just a flipping foot who , seen on-screen long enough , becomes tearfully funny . While a lot of the scenes , like say when the actors have to act convincingly with dialog that is trite and ill-timed and poorly rehearsed and horribly cast ( Gabirel Macht being one of them ) , left me just slapping my hand against my face wondering what I had gotten myself into , there were little pockets that were about as funny as anything I'd seen in years . More frustrating , perhaps , is that I didn't know what Miller aimed for . If say he tried to make an actual joke , like with the toilet gag , it was throw-a-tomato awful . . . but that Nazi scene still makes me shake my head uttering " wow " . Speaking of wow , how about this acting ? If for nothing else , if say playing devil's advocate the picture has a terrific look to it and visuals that stun ( and to be fair one or two shots are stunners , among say thousands ) , the performances here are 90 % of the time variations on boring and dimensional and hackneyed and anything else you can think as an analogy to cardboard . Eva Mendes and Scarlet Johansson reveal why they need actual , real directors , because without they fall apart ( albeit Mendes as shown little anyway to show her real talents ) . Macht , as mentioned , is one of the stiffest heroes in history . Supporting players like the hard-nosed cop and even those goofy-f clones are worthless . . . Only Samuel L . Jackson seemed to get the gist of what he was supposed to do , and any scene he pops up in , almost in spite of Miller's decisions with the character , charges up the picture . It's ironic that Octopus is obsessed with eggs - he plays a ham worthy of the greats . This doesn't make it a great performance , or even a very good one - just not boring , which helps in the midst of such a turgid piece of comic-book movie dung . |
510,516 | 453,068 | 490,204 | 3 | Reinging and ringing over my head | It's basically impossible not to consider the tragedy of as the most significant event of a nightmare day on American soil . At the least it tore up New York city , and left many lives devastated . The writer / director of Reign Over Me , Mike Binder , tries to set up a form of critic-proof shield around his film by making the central tragedy for his protagonist that his family - wife , daughters - were killed on one of the planes in and for years has slipped into a horrible funk that has made him delusional and pretty close to schizophrenic . It's not using for a movie that is troubling ; films like United 93 and to a lesser extent World Trade Center benefited from facing the horror of the day head on . It's using it for this particular tragedy for this man's life . At first it's almost more of a plot device : since it was victims , the government paid out a huge amount to Charlie Fineman ( Sandler ) , so that he can still live in his apartment , refurnish the kitchen as he argued with his wife over on their last phone call , and play video games and jam out on classic rock without the worry of not having a job . Unlike , for example , the Fisher King , where the psychotic widower was also homeless , this solves the problem of dealing with monetary status . But then , as the character develops , it becomes more of a nuisance than anything . There's no depth developed within this situation aside from Charlie not dealing with the loss of his family , and what's explored in the friendship that's reconnected with Dr . Johnson ( Cheadle ) , his ex college roommate , is really bizarre and unamusing at the least and just plain stupid at worst . The way that the two connect rings false on counts of writing and directing , if not all the way on performance . Which leads to the two biggest flaws in this colossal waste , as the two feed into one another : Mike Binder's writing and Sandler's performance . I'm not one to say that Sandler can't act , on the contrary his turn in Punch-Drunk Love is revelatory , and I've even enjoyed him replaying practically the same persona in his string of comic star vehicles ( with a few obvious exceptions i . e . Click , Eight Crazy Nights ) . Here , however , he plays it all as incredulously one-note . You truly want to feel sympathy for the character - some will , to be sure - but Sandler blights this by not giving us anything to see that he wasn't always this cantankerous and crazy and demented . As clichéd as it might've been , albeit on top of the others included in the piece , a flashback wouldn't of hurt aside from the brief blips of his former life . It's such a misstep in perceiving tones of scenes , playing things for goofy laughs and drama sometimes in the same beat . Only a highly charged scene involving a gun carries any leverage in the acting department . But then the other problem , the writing , drives down most of the potential in the piece . I would be interested in seeing a film that explores some of the dimensions of a character coping with deep-rotted grief , yet not in this ham-fisted manner . On top of how Binder deals with Charlie's trauma , there's the friendship aspect , which attempts to pull some dimension for Cheadle's character . To his credit , Cheadle does give it his best , but much of the script asks him to go from being rational ( i . e . dealing with that on / off sexual harassment charge ) to being freewheeling and taking Charlie as a kind of guide to living how one wants to ( i . e . going against family ) . It becomes so frustrating that by the time some of the logical steps come closer - the psychiatric treatment Charlie does need , and is entitled to get - it's almost so out of reach for one to care from the blocks in the material . It's contrivance of plot details , it's contrivance of character , and it's a total sham and manipulation by the time of an unbelievable catharsis . It's simply not a good movie , or at the very least overrated . |
508,429 | 453,068 | 963,194 | 3 | some may love it , and some just wont . . . I definitely didn't | Sometimes a cult film just can't be made when it's just made by " whimsy " or whatever to be so . Sometimes it works , like with Snakes on a Plane , but then other times we get a film that ends up dividing the audience so thickly that you can feel tension in the air during a screening . Luckily I watched Repo ! The Genetic Opera at home on DVD , so me and my wife had and took every chance to bemoan , groan , yell-at-the-screen and curse it to high heavens - I may have even thrown something like headphones at the TV - and didn't have to worry about other meddlesome audience members getting in the way . Because this was , to me at least , not something much enjoyable or memorable as a cult film . It's not a complete failure , but something pretty much close to being , and it is not something I would ever want to watch again ( how I got through it I can't quite explain here . . . maybe blackouts ? ) The filmmaker is Darren Lynn Bousman , responsible for a huge chunk of the Saw franchise , and here he continues his legacy of film-making that is pretty sickening to watch . He has some competent skills , like say knowing how to make BLAZING lights all over the place , or giving it the " blue-tint " look . So he tries , Lord he tries , and if that's your game well then have at it . But it's not much different in quality than the Saw movies except with . . . a song . Or a bunch of them . Actually , that's a lie ; as an opera , this is a case of people " trying " to sing - and good , accomplished singers like Anthony Stewart Head ( who proved he could sing wonderfully on Buffy the Vampire Slayer ) and Paul Sorvino ( a TRAINED opera singer ) tossed in with , well , Paris Hilton ( best thing I can say . . . her boobs grew ? ) , and there are no real melodies , and if there are they have that grungy awfulness that makes Hot Topic look as bad as it probably is when it comes to these pre-manufactured pieces of industrial rock-dung . But , one should take my words with some measure of salt . At best , the music just isn't for me , and if others like some of the songs ( or when they are songs ) I can respect that . What I can't respect is film-making that ignores competent storytelling for a lot of nonsensical singing - when - should - be - talking . Since the title proclaims it to be an opera then that should be an indicator of how the style will reflect this description . Trouble is , there's nothing there worthwhile in the opera category . Some of it is laughable , some of it completely unbearable , all around some hackneyed story that could have some level of simplistic pleasure ( as far as these stories go , which by the way Saw fans , Bousman does his Saw 3 trick here of flashbacks as a means of making up for actually , you know , progressing the story meaningfully ) . And as someone who can dig pointless and excessive violence when done right here it's just done wrong , totally hackneyed there as well . . . another word for hackneyed ? Just . . . blah ? So , I guess , watch the trailer first . Maybe make a somewhat educated guess as to where to go . If loud and monotonous rock anthems that make Rocky Horror look like a cinematic marvel ( which is more deservedly so if it is compared to this ) topped with blue-tint cinematography and crappy CGI and songs that go nowhere , then here's the ticket . But just in case here's a few other things sort of in this vein you could ( or should ) watch instead : Buffy's episode " Once More , with Feeling " where we see just how much better Head is comparatively ( and , frankly , I blame this more on the creative team behind Repo than any lack in Head's skills ) , The Saddest Music in the World ( which also tries for this crazy cinematic exercise in cult-in-the-making movie-making with music and works far better ) , and . . . and I can't believe I'm writing these words : Paint Your Wagon . Period . |
508,682 | 453,068 | 377,471 | 3 | probably one of my least favorite films from 2005 ; not memorable at all | You might think with a cast as large as this , with a mix of big-name actors ( Travolta , Thurman , Keitel , Vaughn ) , music people and other pop culture people ( Andre Benjamin , The Rock , Cedric the Entertainer ) , that it might just be worth watching for them if not funny from the material . But it's not either much funny or really memorable for its cast . When presented with such a group of talent such as this , you know you'll either get something special or something of a downer , and its unfortunate that the latter applies . This is based on an Elmore Leonard book , but it didn't seem as if F . Gary Gray payed attention to getting the right rhythm in the comedy , or just getting the right people for the characters , as Barry Sonnenfeld did with his 1995 film Get Shorty . This time , basically , Chili Palmer ( Travolta ) is in the music industry instead of movies , and he gets involved with a woman ( Thurman sexy in her first scene , though not bringing much else throughout the film ) , and also through wanting to get an R & B singer ( Christina Milan ) to the attentions of producers . But , of course , there are problems on the crime end of the spectrum , involving Keitel and Vaughn , and the Rock . Unfortunately , I can't really tell you much else I can recall from Be Cool , as the story itself isn't much of interest . A couple of individual jokes and lines here and there might muster up a laugh or a grin , but nothing amounts to much , and the filmmaker doesn't seem capable of balancing the varying styles that the actors might be able to bring along with the cooky , deterring story . It's a movie also more concerned with its supporting characters than its lead ( s ) . And one might start to feel a little bit of grimace as Travolta and Thurman once again shake it up on the dance floor , but with something missing from their first outing over a decade ago . Be Cool isn't an unpleasant experience , but it borders on it , as the comedy often hits flatter than expected , and even an actor like Keitel , who I would see in just about anything , can't bring anything to his part . You know there's something a little off when the Rock provides more laughs than anyone else in the picture . |
508,278 | 453,068 | 285,531 | 3 | not a pleasant experience as I remember it | Lawrence Kasan doing an adaptation of a Stephen King novel ; you'd think that the man who was in part responsible for Raiders of the Lost Ark and Empire Strikes Back , and directed a good film or two in his time , would be able to make a memorable work by the author . It is memorable , in it's way , but not really as the author might've intended . Or maybe it is ; maybe it's such a gross-out factor in Dreamcatcher that had King trudge through this . But maybe another problem with adaptating a book like this , another of his I've yet to read , is that it's immense in size and scope ( from what I remember from seeing the size of in in hardcover , a dictionary almost ) . But whatever the reason , Dreamcatcher is a mess , and not just in what pops up on screen from the one-hour mark onward . It starts off promisingly , with a couple of flashback scenes to a childhood setting where the main male characters have a particular struggle , and a ' special ' person is helped by them , and also helps them in return . This has that element of King writing kids that always works well , a tinge of Stand By Me there with an added brush of humanism . Then the story shifts to the friends reuniting in a cabin up in a snowbound mountain . Things seem honky-dory , but they soon turn ugly , very ugly , and then , well , here comes the real juicy parts . What starts off as a story with some interesting fantasy elements involving a ' dreamcatcher ' , something that binds together these characters thoughts somehow , goes off into a crazy alien invasion story . The aliens are dealt with in a very nasty manner , and not in a kind of fun-nasty manner that has been done in other science fiction films or stories . I could deal with the way the aliens first sort of , erm , surface , which involves a part of the body I'd rather not mention here . But then it infects one or two of the others , and it turns one definitely into a kind of bizarre schitzo homicidal maniac who also happens to ride around on the snow on a jet-ski . Then the government gets involved , with Morgan Freeman popping up in one of the very rare times I had displeasure watching him in a movie . He can be the greatest of actors in this day and age , but the character - an obsessive general on the hunt at any cost for the aliens - is beneath him , and any sense he tries to bring to the part gets swept away by the muckedy muck of the story around him . Would I recommend Dreamcatcher even as a so-bad-it's-good horror movie ? Probably not even as that . There were a few moments I could remember , when I finally gave myself away from any sense of reality and turned over to the delirium of the second half of the movie , and it was funny to a degree that was almost cheating but still goofy . But those moments are few and far between . The film overall is a muddle , a lurid take on a story where the characters are set-up OK , and then knocked down or turned on their hinges as what was neat to start with soon evaporates . And one wonders if it's more to blame on Kasdan / screenwriter William Goldman's end , who tried to take on the large-scale scope of King's work , or the actual source material itself . Apparently it was the book that King wrote after suffering from being hit by a car years ago , perhaps as his sort of therapy back to his old writing chops . Which is fine - but for it to be this , and from a man far more talented than such manic , searching - for - scares - other - than - gore tactics like in Dreamcatcher . In short , not a pleasant experience . |
510,561 | 453,068 | 949,731 | 3 | not a real ' worst-movie-ever ' like Lady in the Water . . . more like a high-budget / high-on-itself Ed Wood flick | M . Night Shyamalan , sad to say , was a case of a fluke in Hollywood . This isn't to say that he hasn't had some good moments in movies like Unbreakable and Signs ( more-so for the former ) , but The Sixth Sense , one of the great big wonderkind stories of the 90s has manifested itself with its creator churning out pieces of , frankly , crap upon its unwitting audience . This isn't to say that because his first few hits he wont make more movies - matter of fact he's apparently working on an Avatar picture ( not the James Cameron one , the kid-anime one ) - but following the Village , which took the ludicrous ' twist ' ending to new horrific heights , and Lady in the Water which is , at least to me , a true unmitigated disaster unleashed on to celluloid , The Happening continues the thread of total nonsense in the guise of thoughtful blockbuster stuff . Point of order : The Happening's title first opens up the potential pit-falls for jokes on the title alone ( does anyone else not picture a 60s flower-power flick ? ) , and indeed " something's happening " or " it's happened " or some variation is said enough times to merit a drinking game after it . But then the actual movie , from its opening scenes all the way to the last , are so ridiculous in nearly every step of the way for the same basic reasons that Edward D . Wood Jr's movies are still totally ridiculous failures : give actors a screenplay that is loaded with laughably hackneyed dialog ( at one point the Zooey Deschanal character says , and I quote , " Just when you thought there couldn't be any more evil that can be invented " ) , delivered by more or less ( usually less ) competent actors with straight faces as they are put into a stupid sci-fi premise . In this case a mighty wind of sorts , or rather some chemical coming from the plants that are angry or incensed via nature's wrath or whatever the hell , is attacking the cities and towns of the northeast and the Moore family ( Walhberg and Deschanal and daughter ) run from it . Yep , that's right , a lot of the movie is just characters running from the wind - with the occasional pit stop for Wahlberg to talk to a plastic plant - and from scene to scene there is just one incredibly laughable inanity after another . To give some very minor credit where it's due , it's not always the fault of the direction ; as was the case in the Village there are one or two moments that do reveal some sort of ' vision ' in the works , a shot or two that stand out as impressive . . . and then we get put back into the " what-the-bleep " clockwork of this overwrought " message " movie that says , apparently , that what we don't know from nature and probably can't know since we can't really trust science will kill us . And all the while Shyamalan almost creates something inadvertently very entertaining ; I can imagine the Happening becoming one of those classic bad movies years from now , so entirely dumbfounding with its totally serious-toned acting , dead-pan dialog and awfully staged violence ( i . e . lion feeding , lawnmower ) that one can't help but find it riotous . Maybe Shyamalan can continue his career that way , who knows ? One thing is for certain : the guy is NOT the next Hitchcock or the next Spielberg . He's lucky the wind hasn't knocked him off his feet completely . |
509,928 | 453,068 | 70,948 | 3 | so , Sean Connery didn't understand the Matrix , but this movie . . . | Zardoz is , quite frankly , one of the all-time champion ' train-wreck ' type films I've seen from the 70's , or for that matter any decade . Which means , in short , it's the kind of unbridled cinematic mess that only someone coming right off of the success of Deliverance would even dare of doing . Part of me was thinking while watching this film " what is this director thinking , or trying to even pass off as connecting with the themes ? NONE of this makes sense ! " Then even when I grasped the basic gist of the plot ( if there even is one ) of Connery playing some rogue killer who gets trapped into a ' vortex ' where everyone lives and doesn't die but can get old and can't have sex and blah blah , I and the friends watching this with me kept muttering " oh my God " . In a way it is actually watchable in that very campy , bad-movie sense . There are few bad movies , with the exceptions of Plan 9 and Manos , that contain so many laughs in just the first twenty minutes or so ( unintentionally of course , as it's all played very seriously and self-importantly ) . I mean , even before the opening credits roll we get a ) a giant floating mask-head , b ) random lines referring to the powers of guns and dangers of male genitals , and c ) Connery just shooting at the screen . It only gets better ( or worse depending on your point of view ) from there . Also co-starring is Charlotte Rampling ( and boy has she had better days ) as one of the members of the ' vortex ' who ends up becoming rather close with the main beast-of-burden , so to speak ( and yes , it's rather stupefyingly amazing that his name is ' Zed ' ) . Zardoz is one of those very pure , and of course then intrinsically doomed , cult-of-the-moment pictures , where a filmmaker given carte Blanche by a studio pours out something that is so personal , so strange , and so corrupted by self-indulgence , it's either big hit or dangerous miss . While I would consider this film to be apart of the latter , I didn't necessarily have a bad time watching the film . I knew what I was getting into , for example , just by the theatrical trailer . It's got some of that of-the-times psychedelia working in there , and sequences that utilize slow-motion , instant replay , Zed inside a big , uh , crystal thing , and other outrageous feats of sci-fi cinema . Those who might rate it rather high are likely bigger buffs than I , or maybe can take not only the story seriously but take the style with a grain of salt . But in looking at this today , and especially at a leading man who is looking way too much like Burt Reynolds for comfort , this is one of the more frustrating , deranged , and ironically hilarious films of its time , a kind of ambitious peak into ' what-the-f " film-making that you rarely get anymore . |
510,805 | 453,068 | 63,678 | 3 | a massively confused and dull allegory on bourgeois deconstruction | Teorema brought me to a point I usually don't get to watching films ; I felt like one of these younger ( or just less exposed to ) film-goers who complain about the classic foreign films of the new-waves being too slow and boring . I didn't want to though , as I've seen some of Pier Paolo Pasolini's past work that did impress me quite a lot ( Mamma Roma and especially Hawks and Sparrows come to mind ) . But Teorema is a work that treats ambiguity and allegory like it's not as assets but defense mechanisms . Pasolini has a theme in mind , or maybe a bunch , and they're predicated on some mysterious figure ( Terence Stamp , dubbed terribly into Italian , as apparently the rest of the mostly Italian actors are , and who has little range aside from looking like a handsome Brit ) who appears to a bourgeois family one day during a party , and soon comes the comfort / sex of every member of the family ( save for the father , that , among other things , is never made clear ) . Then , as mysteriously as he arrived , he leaves , and the family goes into a tailspin , as the daughter ( Ann Wiazemsky , who makes her fairly detached performance in Au hasard Balthazar look like a telenovela comparatively ) goes into a catatonic state after seeing his picture , the wife goes batty and aimless , the servant goes to some farm and sits without eating on a bench , and the father also goes into a quasi-shock . It's a maddening film , and not a successful one , because Pasolini doesn't even do anything minimal to make us give one tenth of one crap about any of the characters . Is he condemning or trying to understand these emotionally deprived bourgeois , who male or female jump all over ' The Visitor ' ( un-erotically , I might add , and where's the fun if it's Pasolini ) , and then break apart when he's not around ? The performances might be bad more-so because of the script than because of a dearth of talent : Stamp has done better things , as Silvana Magnano has , but there characters have nothing to do except look awestruck , withdrawn , or in a daze that food or , to be sure , running a factor can quench . It's not that Pasolini even does a failure as a director here - there's one shot especially , as the father walks across the train station in a long tracking shot in a different film stock , that is extraordinary . But even Pasolini's style is off , be it because of lack of budget or by choice , as it becomes noticeable and stupid to suddenly see the change in film-stock from the train-station long shot of the father taking off his clothes , then cutting to an obvious in-studio shot . Maybe acid European art-house fanatics ( and I say fanatics as opposed to fans ) might find some great depth in Pasolini's method to deconstructing his characters , but it's really an exercise in frustration without a pay-off . There's none of the morbid , scalding-hot underlying wit of a real controversial work like Salo , and once the substance starts to irk with the lack of exposition or real depth past the flailing poetic lines , one would try and look at the style for some artistic merit . But Pasolini also compromises himself by adding in supposedly subliminal ( or naggingly intentional ) shots of a blackened desert at times as a character stares off or just during a random moment , and there's other bits of terrible editing as well ( it might have been more effective , for example , if the shot panning up to the woman suspended in the sky didn't suddenly cut jarringly to the on-lookers at the farm ) . And the cinematography almost seems to try to be compensating for what is lacking in the material with many a magisterial but often self-important shot of a character walking for minutes at length for no purpose . And saddening good music is put to poor use . Mozart's requiem comes up any time Pasolini wants to garner some extra emotion , and Morricone , while supplanting an unusual and intriguing jazz score , gets a similar treatment with his notes . Teorema is very disappointing , not simply as a work of social critique or religious drama but as a work from a director who can , and did , do better . It might even be his worst film . |
510,412 | 453,068 | 222,817 | 3 | a good lot like Porno Holocaust , only even more misogynistic and with badly dubbed ( Japanese ) sex scenes ! | Maybe it was the title , or the trailer ( certainly not the interview on the DVD , which is with the director as he keeps saying " hi , kids " into the camera like a buffoon ) , but I had expectations for Entrails of a Virgin to be at least a bit of sleazy fun with some good sex scenes and brutal , bloody killings by a weird Japanese penetrator . Turns out it's way too sleazy for its own good , or bad , or whatever . There's a problem - and one can see this also in the Italian sexploitation flick Porno Holocaust , similar to this in many respects - in not having balance to the sex and violence . Too much sex and it will turn into a prototypical porno , and not even with much production quality in comparison with most professional porno movies ! And with the killing scenes , there has to be at least a little tack , and maybe just a smidgen of ingenuity , in creating the creature / killer / whatever . Entrails of a Virgin has neither . It's safe to say it's a pretty soulless movie , even if isn't one of the very worst ever made - it's there just for horn-dog Japanese fetishists to get off on girls in trouble and men who have all their brains in their ' other ' heads . In this case , we're given a photo team where the guys are taking some shots of some girls , nothing too salacious , and then by way of a dense fog they stay off at some house one night and are picked off one by one by " A Murderer " as he's credited . First off , the director Kazuo ' Gaira ' Komizu decides he has to put in a quota of random sex scenes early on - we get spliced in ( or phoned in , take your pick ) clips of one of the photographers having sex with one or more of the girls elsewhere . It looks like it's from another movie . Then once settled into the house , there's a ' wrestling ' scene that's poorly choreographed and shot ( yeah , we really need to see him ' all ' there ) , and then on to the rape and killings . First the rape , by the photographers , who promise the girls some jobs for their time . Then the Murderer , who like D'Amato's creature is simply covered in mud and given a stupid facial , and who for an unknown reason kills the men and / or rapes the women one by one . Now , the latter of those , taken by themselves , should be considered the highlights of the movie . This is like saying , however , that the croûtons are the best part of a wretchedly tasting salad . An eye-gouging scene , a spike thrown like an Olympic event ( that scene , actually , is kind of cool ) , and finally the entrailing of the overly sex-crazed girl , whose inconsequential name I can't remember . Even this becomes disappointing just by not being correct to the title ! On top of this , the sex scenes , which become tedious through ' Gaira ' and his indulgence in long-takes-without-cutaways where everything by the Japanese censors is blurred anyway , are dubbed over by the actors ( you'd think that they seem to be enjoying themselves enough , hence the need to let them ' speak ' for themselves ) . But the overall feeling from Entrails of a Virgin is that of a lumpy one , where it's just there to be gawked at and without a shred of suspense or true horror ( watch as the last girl left alive , the virgin of the picture , tries to stop the murderer from getting to her , which lasts five minutes as she keeps throwing sticks at him ! ) You just want it to be done with , for the ' I hate women ' mantra to ease up or be rid altogether . |
509,012 | 453,068 | 859,163 | 3 | just one more big-time money maker with no soul and mundane ( though continuous ) action | I guess I remember liking the first two Mummy movies well enough ( matter of fact if I look back at my old reviews they might have been given a piece ) , but at the same time I never remember having a desire to re-watch the movies either after seeing them once as a big-time summer blockbuster as a teenager . With Mummy 3 , they're not even trying anymore , and simply isn't worth your time let alone your money . It's just soulless Hollywood product propped up to try and squeeze any drops left in a franchise that is a reboot of the original 1930's Mummy series . In short , it's a little like the Transformers of 2008 , although I don't even think this will have its defenders like Bay's cluster-f . Now , granted , I wasn't expecting anything really spectacular - frankly it's hard to imagine Dark Knight being topped for pure excitement as a summer movie - but here it's just dumb , and not always the kind of ' fun ' dumb that I was hoping for ( or that might be attempted by the writers ) . It's basically a rehash of the plot of Hero , and ironically stars Jet Li and Maggie Cheung as the main players , and Li plays this Dragon emperor who wanted to take over the world and was ruthless but got frozen in time . His curse is unlocked , however , in the 1940s , and set to reign all over again with his ' mummy ' army . Then steps in the O'Connell family ( Brendan Fraser , Maria Bello inexplicably replacing Rachel Weisz , and Luke Ford as son Alex ) to get back in action once again to try and stop this mummy invasion . . . again . To try and go for any plot is more than just moot ; in the past movies , for all is homaging ( or just ripping off ) of Indiana Jones movies and old-time matinée serials , there were some original ideas and visuals and action set pieces . This time , it's all just a continual loop of Indiana Jones rip-offs ( a friend of mine repeatedly whispered " oh no , it's not from Raiders " or " it's not from Last Crusade " sarcastically ) . There's almost no real invention , even as the climax goes for ANOTHER rip-off ( 300 , anyone ? ) , and the one cool part of the movie - the Yetties ( is that how its spelled ) who are big , hilarious abominable snowmen - lasts all too short an amount of time to have any fun . The rest of the running time is used up for corny , un-funny " jokes " and dialog , false romantic sub-plots , and a performance from Jet Li that is practically non-existent ( and , in fact , he's mostly a skeleton for half the running time despite getting second billing ) . Did I mention the new addition , Luke Ford , is so bland and annoying that he makes Brendan Fraser a charisma magnet ? It's simply another studio piece of ' whatever ' , not a total bomb but without a shred of invention or intelligence in the writing or direction . If it's on TV , watch it for a minute and decide what's going on . But it's bound to be a disappointment even for those who somehow have a nostalgia ( yeah , nostalgia within a decade ) for Mummy and Mummy Returns . |
510,213 | 453,068 | 82,199 | 3 | He is not an agent of the C . I . A . , he is a writer of comic books ! | This is a kid's movie that I wonder how it could have even appealed to me as a kid back when it first had a little more , uh , technical relevance I suppose ? Actually , no , I wouldn't guess so , if at all ever ? Was it a tax write-off ? Or maybe the filmmakers took too many drugs and drinks while watching James Bond and Pink Panther movies ? Or maybe they knew what they were getting into and thought they could still pull off a legitimately entertaining movie for the whole family . I really have no idea how I would've reacted to this is I were a kid , but as a twenty-something , me and the friends I watched it with became practically the Mystery Science Theater guys , heckling and making up lines as it went along . And , in truth , I might've done it even if I was watching it alone . It's camp without knowing it , or if it does know it maybe it's all the smarter for it . But it does try to pass itself off as something for the kiddies when really it's just too ridiculous and inane for anyone . Maybe the title gives it away , but there you have it - he's a man , but he's also a condor , get it ? Well , to put it plainly if I can , Woody Wilkins ( Michael Crawford ) is ambivalent for about a second to take his ' Condorman ' idea to the next step - to team up with the CIA ! His mission is to stop a Russian terrorist , played by Oliver Reed , while also with the seductive Ruskie ' Bear ' ( Barbara Carrera ) . That's really all you need to know , oh wait , there's more : there's a lead henchman with an eye-patch , or is that a marble eye , or both ? How about big gargantuan title cards to introduce every single locale ( though sometimes , like with the alps scenes , becoming a little confusing again ) ? Or massive explosions ? I think that might sum it up . But really , if you seek out the movie , you should know what to expect not just from the title but from just the LOOK on the cover of the DVD or VHS . It might be one thing if British director Charles Jarrott went for such silly subject matter with more gusto , but it's almost as if he KNOWS how goofy this is , and has car chases that just spring out of nowhere , plus a climactic speed-boat challenge where even more big explosions happen ( and the ratio of the henchmen who jump off the boats before explosion and those who stay on during it is maybe and ) . In other words , it was perfect as a kind of film to rag on , to put it mildly . It might be one thing if it was so good it's bad , but it turns it it's so mediocre it's just , well , bad . It's got heroes and villains that put out dialog that sometimes is a little incoherent , the bumbling sidekick who is SUPPOSED to be a CIA agent , and that darn one-eyed henchmen , come together in a film where said Condorman only takes flight for less than four minutes ! If anything kind can be said about it , it's at least not a boring bad movie , where its so relentless with cheesiness that it becomes wearisome . It's almost too whacked out to get dull at any one point . It is consistent in trying to be entertaining when it really isn't , however it thus becomes on the flip-side entertaining again as fodder for the sort of slings and fun that would make Statler & Waldorf of the Muppets die to dig in on . It's simply one of the most unintentionally funny movies of the 80s , at least from Disney . |
508,565 | 453,068 | 79,573 | 3 | it's all TRUE after all ! | I could barely keep myself from either nodding off or just turning off this turd , but I decided to stick it out if only for the reasoning that maybe something would happen . This is the work of a writer / producer / director / special fx , Kenneth Herts , who wants to make a statement on ecological damage while making a monster movie . That's what he wanted , anyway . What it turns out to be is a lot of acting , either slightly hammy or just mundane and without much merit , and scenes that seem to repeat themselves as the monster ATTACKS in the river waters ( oh , and what luck , a woman just happens to be naked in it . . . even though there have already been DISAPPEARANCES ! ) This is just nonsensical stuff , but I suppose it's not too harmful ; it's not very obnoxious at the least and once or twice we get a semi-interesting peek at Brazilian " culture " ( which is the father walking through town with his flock or other pieces of a semblance of ' hey , this is NOT America ! ' ) . But whatever hope the director had in casting Mitchum or Carradine is squandered on at best pedestrian and at worst excruciatingly banal and dumb dialog . It doesn't help that when we finally get something of a good look at the monster and the " action " happens , it too is stupidly staged and with only sleazy appeal . Usually I would feel sorry for a filmmaker who had a lot of problems getting a particular picture finished - in this case it took the better part of the mid 70s - but with Monstroid or Monster or whatever it's called . . . nah . If you happen to get the Elvira DVD double-feature of this ( bad print with bad transfer quality ) with Blue Sunshine , make sure to skip this one . Unless , of course , you're an Elvira die-hard and can't help yourself to hear her luscious commentary ; personally , I'd rather get Joel or Mike Nelson with the robots from Mystery Science Theater on this roast turkey . |
509,919 | 453,068 | 920,468 | 3 | A movie that means well , but is as overbearing as a rehab cult member | Over the GW is a near failure of a debut feature , and not because it's not without trying . . . Actually , it is . It's a shamble all the more because it's writer / director / technical everyman Nick Gaglia went through the same rehab cult that he depicts in the film . Sometimes a first time filmmaker , full of the vigor that comes with getting a thumbs up or two from fellow film students , goes headlong into style that is way too disjointed , unsure , and dramatically frustrating that the personal side of the story , the extremely personal side , gets smudged in the purpose of telling a good story . Gaglia , who was 13 when put into a horrid program that basically tortured and brainwashed their " patients " with crazy group scare tactics , psychological mind-f sessions that could go on for days , and attitudes from the rehab leaders that would make most Nazis cringe , escaped finally when he was 15 . I'm glad he got out , though it might help if he now goes into a real rehab for his film-making skills , if only for a couple of days , to learn things like , say , structure , proper lighting , fluid camera movement , subtlety with actors , and other basics that are perpetually lost here . It's all the more frustrating because Gaglia is dealing with a subject that should be shown more to the public ( there was recently a Newsweek article referring to a similar AA cult-rehab ) . Many times one wonders if certain personal character studies might work better as documentaries as opposed to narrative dramas . This is an ever-nagging sensation throughout Over the GW , where it almost feels like Gaglia wants to tell the truth but doesn't know how to communicate it properly through his characters . The character that one would think is closest to him , Bronx teen Tony Serra ( Gallagher ) , who is taken by his mother to a rehab in New Jersey , would be closest to Gaglia , is actually much more of a one-dimensional being , where there is very little back-story ( we see a brief freak-out , in black and white , in his old home ) and little connection to his mother ( Moriarty ) , who has more potential that is never tapped aside from a cold stone who passes her kids off to another . But there is a story to go with his two-year crisis , I guess . Right off the bat things get rough ( a nude cavity search in the first five minutes ) , and soon it's clear that instead of medical care it's more like a cross between anger management and some bizarre religious sect , where the head doctor Hiller ( Insinnia ) is a total over-controlling loon . But soon Tony's sister Sofia ( Donohue ) gets thrown in to the program , and as opposed to Tony's repeated moments of outrage and supposed non-compliance , she goes head-on through the whacked-out three step program and once released becoming a runaway . At times there are bits in this fractured nightmare , where there's one woman , a 22 year old mother who has been in the program a year and a half finds she's become a prisoner not allowed to leave , and when the father of the main siblings comes and pays an enraged visit to Hiller when Sofia finally returns to them , that do contain some raw power , very brief glimpses of Gaglia being able to at least garner some leverage in pure melodrama . But these are moments few and far between . It's not just the unsuccessful characters , who are mostly reduced to stereotypes that veer into being like hysterical D . A . R . E . rip-offs ( maybe some of them , like an angry black youth , the passive-aggressive counselors , or even Serra's older sister who is ratted out by the siblings as having taken a hit off a joint and almost thrown into the program , would resonate more if there was more time given to develop any of them ) . It's that Gaglia is so unfocused in his multiple roles on his tiny $30 , 000 budget that not one side of whatever potential talent he has can come through . He over-uses tints , mostly with a shade that looks urine-coated ) , he jiggles his hand-held DVX camera as if it's supposed to be intense ala City of God , occasionally a character will just shoot into frame randomly , his choices of music are like the worst selections possible from pseudo-indie soft-rockers , and there's even inane fake interview scenes with Nicholas Serra ( inspiration ? ) and Krakowsky that feel about as false as possible . Could Gaglia just not get any interviews with the real victims he was with and resort to would-be artistically cathartic plan B ? Bottom line , no matter how much from-the-heart true life stories may appeal to you , don't bother seeing it in the theater , or even on rental , unless you love a final scene with two kids staring off into the digital-hued Hudson river sunset with the final words reading : Dedicated to the Kids . Oy . |
510,320 | 453,068 | 118,747 | 4 | mostly a disappointment | John Landis ' Blues Brothers 2000 has a ridiculous plot that goes nowhere ( at least the original had somewhat a plot to get money to save a church ) and is dumb to enough of a degree to warrant it almost as patched-together in a coffee-shop over three nights . Also , for die hard fans of the original , they will feel a great , unavoidable void where John Belushi fit in the original as Jake Blues ( Belushi is dead ) . So that's the disappointment . And there are others , including the inevitable rehashing by Landis and Aykroyd of the past plot line almost to a T with extra fluff like the responsibility factor , whatever that is , put upon Jake and the kid . The car chases , too , are only so-so when compared to the audacity and bizarre originality of the first film's chases ( good for their time , and almost too simple and predictable to do twenty years later ) . But the film isn't totally irredeemable - it almost sets itself up NOT to be by overloading with various Blues icons both old and not so old . So the climactic big performance featuring a who's who of blues and rock musicians is almost worth seeking out the film to see , at least if you're a fan . But it is definitely hit ( very narrow hit ) or very much a miss for original fans of the SNL series and ( compared to this ) absolute post-modern 1980 classic comedy . That it only provides a few solid laughs make it all the more dreary , a sign of Landis's decline from his high peak in the 80's . Cameos include Frank Oz , Darrell Hammond , BB King , Steve Lawrence , Eric Clapton , Erykah Badu , Aretha Franklin , Isaac Hayes , Dr . John , Steve Winwood , John Popper ( Blues Traveler ) , and James Brown as the always awesome Reverend Cleophus James ( who actually provides the funniest part of the film after the end credits ! ) |
508,590 | 453,068 | 780,571 | 4 | is too mediocre to be a camp classic , but you might have some laughs at the filmmaker / actors ' expense | Mr . Brooks brings out its bag of tricks early on , but its a bag that's sort of moldy and with the scent of contentment with the average as opposed to more outrageous tendencies . It was a good time for the wrong reasons during the film , a vehicle for Kevin Costner to try to make a grasp at star-defiance of type ( instead of a hero he's a killer , woo , big leap ) , but I wondered if maybe the writers would've fared better if they hadn't gone on to make it a " legitimate " thriller . The aspect to the Costner / William Hurt dynamic , where it's a blatantly obvious contrivance of the script where almost every scene without Brooks with a different person in the room or other to talk to is with Hurt's character of Brooks's ego , or Id , or whatever Freudian tick-tack may apply . Some of there scenes , however stupid they might be ( including one where Costner cries , have mercy ) , show some interesting bits and pieces of psychological unease between the two , as if it's been too long that Brooks has listened to his egger-on and doubting Thomas , but still does as the two have wicked laughs at the possibilities of murder and deceit . However , it's director / co-writer Bruce Evans's idea to make Mr . Brooks crammed with the typical elements of a mystery-thriller involving a serial killer , and in some equally expected and inane ways . Demi Moore's character is the given , the tough pro who is saddled with her other motivation that she has to crack the case or else be fired due to a divorce case happening the same time ( this is a totally inexplicable plot line made so that Moore can act even more ' tough ' , and to eventually tie it into the Brooks killing line ) . Then there's Dane Cook , who doesn't act so much as just use his sort of twitchy ' skills ' at acting like he can act to play the almost blackmailing photographer who catches Brooks in the act of killing two of his latest , and then is brought along by Brooks to see someone else get killed . On top of this , we get the ' other wise ' to Brooks's life , which is that he's a legitimate businessman and a loving husband and father , the latter of which to a girl who may turn out to be as dysfunctional as him , in the worst ways possible . Instead of possibly giving the characters and developing situations much serious thought , Evans and his co-writer make it all too ridiculous to take as something more interesting , and at the same time tries to make it a conventional thriller to make it experimental . Although Evans isn't necessarily incompetent as a craftsman with the camera - there are , in fact , many well done shots in darkness and silhouettes and other moody scenes of Brooks in his dark home or in thought or Moore swimming in the pool - the story is just too stupid to really make it on either side , with some minor exceptions ( the moment when Cook's " Mr . Smith " finds the newspaper in the car with the words circled to spell out instructions , to his total anger , is hilarious ) , and the actors are left with material to flounder in . Cosnter can show his talents from time to time , but again he's saddled himself to a work that might have at some point allowed him for extra room to challenge himself , but in the end he almost challenges his audience to actually see if he has anything , at all , going on emotion-wise , which is next to none . William Hurt takes a nose-dive following his smashing Oscar nomination a couple years ago . Moore is , well , the usual , not bad but nothing more worthy of potential . And Cook is close to being a non-entity in a role that should require more chutzpah . In short , wait for TV , real late night I'm - drunk - and - there's - nothing - else - on TV , for this mainstream clap-trap . |
509,901 | 453,068 | 141,186 | 4 | as much as it might entice you to see 3D porno . . . it's not worth it . . . | There's a reason one doesn't see that many 1970s XXX movies shown in 3D anymore , if ever , and Disco Girls in Hot Skin is one of the few exceptions likely ever to come out . It plays from time to time at midnight screenings around the US , and it played recently in New York city . I saw it , curious just to see not even so much what a porno would look like on a big screen ( having grown up post Taxi Driver / present internet generation the theaters for XXX simply don't exist anymore in the city even if I was so inclined to go ) but in 3D . And the answer : about what one should expect unless if they're expectations are too high . The film might have been shot in 3D , of that I am not sure at all yet . From the looks of things , either way , the people behind the movie did a very poor job of putting it together . Now , I don't mean this entirely in terms of it as an actual movie , though as a 1970s hardcore porno one has to expect that it's a ) repetitive and stupid and occasionally pretty boring , and b ) at best , and there are some ' best-of ' moments , it's completely cheesy , hilarious disco-era sex-ploitation fun . What I mean is that it's just not at all worth the 3D hype ; watching it with the old-school blue and red glasses ( note to those expecting a recent experience like out of Coraline or My Bloody Valentine 3D ) is retarded , since the colors are already washed out of the print and by putting the glasses on you're not getting that much at all of the original images , however not very well filmed and sometimes just downright fing horrible the shots can get , and it's just lots of blue and red filtered together , with images appearing in double . Only a car chase , which happens for about 15 seconds , is worth any of the trouble . Lame . Simple as that . You know who you are already if you have any desire to see this movie , or then again maybe you don't . You might think that you'll want to see it just for kicks , and if that's the case it's just OK . You should seek out actual GOOD exploitation movie-fare ala Jack Hill pictures or Death Race 2000 or even crazy biker flicks before having to venture into such bizarre and SUPER low budget territory . Some jokes like the recurring psychiatrist who just POPS right into frame ( literally , I'm serious ) to give advice to the one guy who can't get " it " up are pretty amazing , as are the old-school Star Trek props like the rocks thrown in the climax , and a couple of lines of dialog or just a super-duper random cutaway were funny . Other times it just got to be what you'd KNOW going into the movie it would be , which is rampant hardcore sex of all the varieties save for man-on-man , and how this will affect you will depend on how you view pornography . I'm not disgusted by it , but it's never a turn on in the slightest so except for the guilty pleasure of being in a midnight screening of other crazed and drunken fools yelling and howling at the screen ( and the laughter sometimes caused by just laughing at oneself for getting into something like this ) it becomes tedious and just , well , bland , even for supposedly " classy " 1970s porno . And save for a couple of moments of actual disco it falters on that count as well : because it's an underground porno with a couple of big names ( John Holmes gets top billing but is only in one scene oddly enough ) , it doesn't have any real money or resources to make itself a period piece save for a couple of shots at a rinky-dink club and a couple of afros here and there . It's got the crummy disco music but nothing to make it ever in the slightest memorable . Its gimmick really rests on the 3D and since that makes one dizzy enough to fall down the stairs trying to get out of the movie theater on the way out , there's only the scatter-shot moments of sleaze that entertain . It was an experience I was glad to have once , and now never , ever again . It's for real die-hard hardcore fans only , and next time I'll know a lot better . . . that is until the re-release of Jaws 3D ! |
508,180 | 453,068 | 478,087 | 4 | want to take a gamble ? this movie STINKS ! | Robert Luketic , director of 21 , doesn't have as his major folly to change the characters from the book ( which I have not read but heard a bit about ) from an all Asian group of card counters in Las Vegas to a more ' mixed ' lot ( i . e . about are Asian now ) . Nor is it even his casting of his lead actor ( Jim Sturgess probably brings more charm to the two-dimensional part than one would've thought was possible ) . His biggest folly was not questioning as he went through the motions of making a silly , contrived , hyper - slick - music - video - shot - in - Jiminy - Jilikers - High - def if there was anything to change up on an audience who knows such motions through and through . The only thing that might differentiate this movie from a whole host of smart-guy-in-a-new-dirty-pond flicks ( and I can't name them all but the likes of Rounders is a masterpiece compared to this ) is that the characters turn into models from GQ and Maxim by the time they hit it big in Vegas . Not expecting much from 21 is just about right , or even worse . And don't get me started on Laurence Fishburne and Kevin Spacey . It's a paycheck day once again for these two very good - sometimes even fabulous - thespians , who slum their roles as a would-be-DeNiro-in-Casino and a shady MIT professor who by the looks of the movie should be characterized as team-leader-Satan respectively . They too understand what is going on in 21 , which is an ol ' fish-out-of-water fable about smart people doing stupid things with lots of money at stake as an MIT kid ( Srugess ) with aspirations for Harvard med joins a group that goes to Vegas and stakes out hundreds of thousands per weekend by counting cards and hustling from table to table . I guess , in a way , I don't blame them for not doing much at all with their roles . But one would hope that there would be something , ANYTHING , that would make this as something for them to distinguish , that the director & / or the script would give them something to do aside from filling in pat performances from at least a good few other parts they've played . As mentioned , Sturgess at least brings a little bit of interest to a character carved out of some sympathy as kid who gets in way over his head . There's not much else with supporting players either . Kate Bosworth is the kind of actress whom you think can sort of act , or at least knows how to pretend to really act . But there's also something just not there clicking , something when she puts on the ' concerned ' face that just screams so bland that you can't even take it . The writers also plug in clichés of yester-year ( and not long enough ) : Jacob Pitts as the snotty side character in the group who is just too jealous and stubborn to stay in the group long once Benn arrives ; the old nerdy friends from before Ben's trip into blackjack land , who are there as a function and not as any real character ' base ' . And then there is the script in and of itself - giving us such forlorn twists and turns in its final reels that I want to choke on my popcorn - and the direction as well , which pumps up the volume for the kids while making sure to completely sanitize a real Vegas experience for college-aged younguns ( and , of course , the shallowest of all , the two hot male and female leads have to hook up , without much connection whatsoever ) . Maybe you could give it a couple of quick peeks , maybe five minutes , when it's on TNT in a couple of years . But as far as giving any substantial money to this enterprise ? The house wins , Johnny , that's the way it is . |
508,884 | 453,068 | 303,816 | 4 | surprisingly run-of-the-mill for the most part , a fairly average , stupid / bad horror fest | I had heard some bad things about Cabin Fever almost as much as I heard the cultish hype . As it turns out , the first film from the new impresario Eli Roth , it's just a so-so effort with the IQ points dropping as the film progresses . There are worse movies out there , and surely more gory ones ( while I'm not sure how the hype-meter got so high on the blood-count for Hostel , there is a good amount for genre fans here ) . The premise isn't necessarily bad either though : kids go to a cabin for a week of partying , only to come across a very sick man , covered in blood , whom in a panic they set on fire . He winds up dead in the water that feeds the reservoir , and soon the characters all succumb to the flesh-eating virus one way or another . The characters , either the lead college kids ( including Rider Strong as the hero and James DiBello as the goofy side-bar ) or the supporting ' village ' folks are archetypal to the point of inertia , if not painfully so . As they meet their fates , the townspeople get pretty weird , and it just seems to be non-sensibly thrown together without the many laughs ; ' Pancakes kid ' comes out of nowhere , and maybe might have been funnier in another movie or by itself , but in the context of the rest of the movie , it just doesn't work . There's also a young police character who is even dumber and less convincing than the others . And the family that goes after DiBello following an incident has some possibilities that aren't realized . But all the while , Roth pumps up his script with common sense out the window and sudden scares and frights with people hacking up blood on one another and a killer dog rambling around . Which isn't all for not either . Now , unlike lesser Troma horror movies or even lesser ones of the 70s or 80s - to which I'm sure Roth is a die-hard fan - he doesn't make it unwatchable . It's also smart to not have any explanation for where the virus comes from . But unlike those films too , he also doesn't really have a fine idea of what makes for great campy-horror times . His film tries for that , of course , and only once or twice does he make it a goofy , bloody time ( I did like the random bunny Strong sees while on the gurney ) . It's not even very poorly shot a lot of the time ( albeit with its own contrived style-choices ala red tint on the lens or that story with the bowling-alley worker ) . It simply contains a lot of illogical scenarios and choices made ( shave your legs with a deadly virus , uh-huh ) , and it aims for fairly typical ground . If that's your cup of tea , more power to you . But at the end I found it to be actually un-exceptional genre territory that doesn't offend audience sensibilities ala Saw , but doesn't swing for the fence either as a clever B-movie . Roth also has the temerity to end the movie on a true note of ' what-the-hell ' as the Santa Claus bearded convenience store clerk from earlier in the film serves a bunch of black people . It could work if he followed up on it with something better , or if he dropped it altogether . Same could be said for a lot of the movie . |
510,971 | 453,068 | 481,369 | 4 | this maybe could be a little more tolerable as a half hour Twilight Zone episode . . . wait , without commercials , 23 minutes ! | That is one of the goofy comparisons you might make , as I did , when this goofy psychological thriller ended . Because despite what might have been director Joel Schumacher and DP Matthew Libatique's loftier intentions with the grit and ' mainstream-noir ' , the writing ends up cramping up everything that might have been worthwhile . There is a premise here , just not one that goes down very fast in anything that seems sharp or with a real edginess that I could have latched onto . Fernelly Phillips , on his first feature as a screenwriter , comes out with many ideas and gimmicks and , to be sure , contrivances that reminded me of the gimmicks I saw from the lesser screenwriters at my film school - it's almost like pulling together some kind of general theme and extending it to see if something really sticks about obsession and the symbolism of numbers , or a number in this case as the be-all-end-all of meaningful numbers . Maybe if he had focused his energies on more of the noirish aspects of the characters , as opposed to flaunting the number 23 , I wouldn't still be making jokes about numbers adding or equally somehow to 23 , and almost hating myself for making those jokes at the movie's expense . Maybe it was to be expected that Schumacher , who hasn't really made a very satisfying film since the mid 90s , would gravitate to material like this that would at least allow him some time to exercise his ' weird ' directorial chops . And really , there is some potential in this as well ; Carrey's dog-catcher protagonist is given a book on his birthday ( which is on , ho-ho ) called the Number 23 , which deals with a sax-playing detective with a dark past who gets involved with an even darker , more sadistic woman ( Virginia Madsen , who also plays the ' real-world ' wife of Carrey's character , as he envisions it as he reads it anyway ) , and the sadism and murder and madness that ensues . If there was just a straight adaptation of the book AS the movie , or if the archetypal figures that lay in this pulpy world inspired in part by serial novels were just put forward simply without the number symbolism , it would be a much more intriguing movie . Especially because said ' imagined ' scenes showing what happens in the book are shot in a perfectly abstract style , where even in the choppy edit parts there's still a vicious vision going on . These sparks indicate that there COULD be some talent in writer and filmmaker . As for Carrey , he seems to be just going through his motions for what he can do as an actor ( as with Madsen , up to a point ) , but it's not enough to stop what happens with the script , which at times seems to be going at lengths to continue that montage in Pee Wee's Big Adventure when Pee-Wee sees all the bikes going by when his is gone . Soon Carrey's " every-man " sees it everywhere , with numbers adding up , the combinations endless , and it all leading to what ends up being so predictable I wouldn't dare spoil it not because it's very important but just to not insult your intelligence reading this . Just let it be known that Phillips decides to take that easy-route of the main character really having to face head-on everything that he's encountered so far and then re-contemplate everything in his entire life . This , which makes up the last fifteen minutes , is excruciating in the length of the exposition , with all the answers spoon-fed to the audience so that nothing is left questioned about who this man really is or what he's done . It compounds what has already gone on with the pretentious obsessive qualities , of it being about the ' trick ' instead of it being more interesting about characters ( the very last scene also made me shake my head and do all but throw popcorn at the screen ) . Bottom line , it's a pretty stupid entry in the careers of both actor and director , which also happens to include a supporting character of a dog named Ned ( who provides a very unintentionally funny scene with the dog on one end of the road and Carrey in his car at the other ) , Bud Cort in the thankless role , and lots of big-budget attention paid to the grungy details of what is under a happy existence to reveal the wretched skeletons in the closet ( or rather under a stone in a park ) . It's too conventional , in all actuality , to follow up on the daring it portends in the already pushy trailer and ads . |
509,890 | 453,068 | 122,143 | 4 | maybe if Vincent Price narrated it would be better , but . . . . | The Last Broadcast is the kind of example that should be remembered when watching Romero's Diary of the Dead . There were some who criticized Romero for the style of the picture , for the amateurish acting and an unfitting documentary approach . I would put forward the argument that Romero's self-conscious approach that one of the film students edited The Death of Death on a comp while locked in a panic room was meant to satirize other documentary-style pictures that go overboard in trying to make " messages " . Such as , well , The Last Broadcast . Here is a horror-documentary that takes itself way too seriously for its own good , after opening with a possibly promising premise and couple of scenes that work as intentionally amateur clips of " Fact or Fiction " hosts on Public Access TV - later victims of what could be the Jersey Devil - and then nose-diving into either mind-numbingly boring exposition , cheesy and / or ridiculously edited " digital " images , and a final ten minutes that had me smacking my head just to make sure I wasn't hallucinating . So , in short , The Last Broadcast is definitely something of an independent find , but not in one of those nice ways where you find an item you hear about for years and it turns out to be a gem . Here we get " real people " ( and some of them , of course , are ) telling the story through David Leigh's audio commentary about the Jim Suerd being charged and convicted of murdering the hosts of " Fact or Fiction " and then the process of piecing together footage that is mysteriously sent to the filmmaker and editor Michelle and what clues might lie within . As trying for the documentary style by directors Avalos and Weiler , it falls flat . Not just because of others out there ( i . e . Cannibal Holocaust , the Monster Hunter ) that take similar approaches with sharper results . It's because of an inherent lack of understanding of how a documentary should work even as a " not-real " documentary . It's hard to build any suspense because whenever something interesting might happen in the found footage there's a cut-away to something stupid , or a lousy freeze-frame or another editing device used as if by the " filmmaker " . And it's not really a fault of it being shot on such a ridiculously low budget in and of itself . I can respect that , and if anything it's a good sign for other filmmakers that something can be attempted to be shot on hand-held cameras and edited in the midst of " the digital age " . But in the ill-prepared hands it's not an asset either , as Avalos and Weiler can't direct their actors much at all , least of them horribly monotoned David Beard ( seriously , wouldn't Vincent Price's droll but menacing baritone work far greater worth here ? ) , and they barely ever conjure up much genuine suspense because , really , the main focus of the Jersey Devil is blurred by poor storytelling : a continuing mass of not-even first-year film school attempts at making " flashy " editing choices and transitions . And yet I might have been able to forgive a lot of the flaws throughout the picture if not , oh for the love of Pete , those last ten minutes . After the bulk of the picture going through its warped documentary approach , when a horrific and sudden ( not to mention completely WTF ) murder happens , the style reverts to a regular third-person approach , complete with cranes and stedi-cams and other things that suddenly take the viewer completely out of what's been happening . Aside from the murder not making much sense , and even being laughable to a morbid degree , it also doesn't really do much to suggest anything menacing about the Jersey Devil . What is it , that the Jersey Devil somehow can go through internet lines ala electric Gremlin from Gremlins 2 and ask questions to low-rent public access hosts ? Or that the Jersey Devil infects the souls of filmmakers who suddenly go from being objective to subjective ? What's the point ? There isn't one , in the end , which makes the original idea lose next to all of its potential . Or , to put it another way , it says right on the front of the video box a quote from a supposedly praising review : " May have influenced Blair Witch . . . it certainly preceded it . " Um . . . What ? |
508,878 | 453,068 | 299,910 | 4 | not too surprised it's straight to video ; it's exploitive fun , but lesser Miike all the way | I thought of a couple of director Takashi Miike's movies while watching Full Metal Yakuza - Ichi the Killer and Izo - because of what they have sort of in line with it . Both of those films have a protagonist who , more or less , is on a hell-bent path of murderous destruction . But even Izo , in comparison with this ( and I consider Izo a flawed film ) , is more worthwhile than this minor claptrap . Maybe it's also a sign of what Miike had with better things to come , as it was just a short on-assignment gig to fill up his V-Cinema requirements . Not that you can't tell he might've had a hand in some scenes , notably the most violent and abrasive ones where the hero of the title gets his revenge ( albeit with the head of one yakuza and the heart & body of another , ho-ho ) . There's not much story to it at all , except that a lowly gangster gets gunned down when his mentor , a yakuza previously in jail for 7 years , gets out and gets killed too . A mad scientist dubbed the " nutty professor " ( double ho-ho ) puts them back together , and this time totally in metal . Not that there aren't any other " special " modifications too , like in the groin area to be precise ( not just quick blue electrical flashes go through when he gets charged up ) . Then the exploitation-fun continues , as the bare plot wheels away until I couldn't really care less about whatever really happened with most of the characters , and just wondered when the next big huge violent gush of blood would occur . The special effects , even for something as quick and ultra low-budget ( and yes , even for a Robocop spin-off it's very low-budget , even with an invention or two in Miike's arsenal ) , are cheesy , and sometimes the film / video speed reminded me of seeing kids movies from the 80s or something . The only side development in any of the characters , however shallow , is with a woman ( a prostitute I believe ) who is with another man after a previous ill-timed engagement . Sure to be OK enough for most just looking for a splatteriffic time , but I think to really get a lot more laughs out of it I'd have to be pretty wasted . It's not devoid of punch , but it's got nothing in the way of a sharpness of wit or wild visual panache of Miike's other works . It's just what to expect - a V-Cinema gimmick made long into a feature with so-so acting and a yakuza story that's nothing new ; I don't even think it'll get too much better if on a repeat viewing either . |
510,808 | 453,068 | 373,883 | 4 | a ' re-imagining ' from Rob Zombie that confuses gore and exploitation theatrics ( and loads of exposition ) for real thrills and chills | The main problem in doing a Halloween remake is that the original is so much still , nearly thirty years on , in the public's movie-going consciousness that it holds its ground . John Carpenter took a very ambiguous approach to the slasher movie , of making a ' boogeyman ' out of a mute psychopath , and filmed it in a manner that , as Ebert pointed out , could be comparable to Hitchcock . Rob Zombie doesn't take that route . His style mixes the slapdash 70's B-movie splatter-movie throwback approach he used in The Devil's Rejects with the conventions of Halloween , and very quickly it becomes a deterrent to whatever he's trying to do in the script . Once or twice it almost seems as if he might try and improve as a director in some scenes , but then he falls back on shaky hand-held camera-work and lots and lots of gore ( ' gotta see the killing ' must have been Zombie's motto on the set during the slaying scenes ) . But that's only one gripe to have , and probably not even the central one . Probably the biggest flaw in Zombie's construction of the film is in making the ambiguous not only nil , but juxtaposing a new theorem to Myers psychology . Gone is the long point-of-view shot that opens the original Halloween , where the perspective has to make the viewer fill in the blanks at will . Now there is forty-five minutes of filling in the blanks , the whitexploitation way : Myers may be a psycho , but it could've been fixed , couldn't it , had he just had the right parents who weren't a waste of space redneck ass and a stripper mother ? Just hearing Myers talk and get bullied on is a mistake ; unlike in Devil's Rejects , where there might have been a purpose ( albeit sort of lost on me ) in making the antagonists the renegade heroes , Myers doesn't need explanation or , dare it be suggested , sympathy for his downfall into madness behind the mask . It's ironic that the producers decided to opt for Zombie's version when originally they planned on making a prequel about Myers's childhood years . If I wanted to get some real psychological insight into a stalker-of-the-night I'd re-read the Watchmen comic-book on Rorscach . And yet the idea of trying to put a new spin on a slasher film of the classic likes of Halloween with a more twisted spin isn't lost on me . On the outset , one's expectation could be at least that the remake might do one better than the recent spat of sequels . But Zombie still lags in that same pool of franchise product , despite his best intentions , because he doesn't project the necessities of suspense , of real horror of the un-seen . A few times Michael Myers will enter into someone's house through the front door ( Laurie Strode's parents are one example , as well as with one of Laurie's sexy and sexed up friends ) , and it could be more interesting if the shot of the door slamming would be the end of the scene . But then we have to go inside , to see the brutality in all of Myers's thrashing and stabbing and choking and so on . It turns to tediousness , which even in the lessor sequels wouldn't be too strong of a factor against it . And Zombie also crams in the information that wisely was left until Halloween 2 , originally , which draws out the narrative until one just wishes that it would end already . It wouldn't surprise me if some day Rob Zombie makes a credible work of film-making , but so far from what films he's made only Devil's Rejects comes close ( and not by a whole lot even ) to showing any promise of him as a writer ( maybe more-so ) & / or director . Gone in Halloween are the little bits of scathing humor that populated his past work , and also gone is a reverence likewise to the underlying wit in some scenes that Carpenter presented ( the ' ghost ' scene is now more about the naked girl than about any real scares ) . It's not a failure , but it's no great shakes at all for the horror genre either . However , if you think that this might be the end of the franchise , it could be by the looks of the ending . . . |
508,965 | 453,068 | 94,594 | 4 | A movie poorly executed by and for the hippie culture , made nineteen years after the title year | I only watched 1969 late night one night because the title indicated to me that it might be a film dealing with the issues of the time in the year with sincerity or promise , or even as a documentary . I didn't know how the film would go after the first couple of scenes I saw , but Bruce Dern seemed formidable enough to keep a watch . When the credits started to roll though I thought to myself , " what a cliché ridden disaster this became , why did I stick with it ? " I guess I stayed tuned because the actors seemed promising enough - Dern in a supporting role as a hard-nosed father , his son in the lead played by Kiefer Sutherland , his cocky best friend played by Robert Downey Jr . , and his beautiful sister played by Winona Ryder . Sutherland's character , Scott , decides he doesn't want to go to Vietnam like his brother , so he enlists into college with Downey's character , Ralph , and the two begin to discover what they've been sheltered from - free-love , drugs , and soon enough sex . Some of these early scenes seemed to look kind of silly , but I enjoyed the ( partly obvious ) soundtrack and thought if I stayed with picture ( instead of flipping to a different , better movie ) it might pay off in the second or third act . I got proved wrong , as line after line and moment after moment seemed to lower my expectations , and the characters headed towards an last scene that made me want to puke in my lap . The probable cause of the pits in this movie come from writer / director Ernest Thompson . I don't know who he is really , and I haven't seen any of his other efforts as a filmmaker , but it looked as though he was either tapping into his own by-the-numbers first account of the turmoil that went with coming of age in that year , or was tapping into the memories of other baby boomer yuppies who still try to think back to when they wanted freedom before gluing themselves into the " me " generation . The players tried to do what they could , a couple of scenes had some laughs , and I grinned at a line or two from Downey Jr . Yet I couldn't get over how much the movie hit its well intentioned points home with near propagandizing techniques . To sum it up , this is absolutely the soapy , " made-for-television " version of what life was like in 1969 . If you want the truer , earthy version ( s ) see Woodstock or Easy Rider - those two may be folklore at this point for that generation , but at least they work as being entertaining thirty-four years later to the following generation . |
508,795 | 453,068 | 71,666 | 4 | try to get through ' They ' - it's fairly slow , tedious , and red lights ! | The very opening shots of They , aka Invasion from Inner Earth , aka The Selected , aka Hell Fire , aka your mama ( well , not the last one ) , has lots of people running around , apocalypse raging . This is obviously from another movie , as the producers of the film rarely have enough of a budget for Wonder bread inbetween the takes for the actors much less staging a big epic cluster-f . Right after these shots , which look made for a promising movie it cuts to the Wisconsin ( or Canadadian ? ) wilderness , where some guys are flying in a plane . But there's also a crazy guy flying a plane who crashes in the woods . The four guys see this and investigate . But there's more than they bargained for : all communication with the outside world is cut-off , except to a pretty girl with a radio in her cabin one of the guy's knows . Then a red light coming out of a flashlight is buzzing around the room - the alien , of course - and now there are ominous callings on the radio . Spooky ? Moreover inept , really , though it's not without a certain allotment of watchability ( unless it's late at night , which might make it a good movie to fall asleep to , or to fool around with the significant other ) . But it's also so cheaply shot that anything that could possibly be in the script is obfuscated by the meandering take of the material . ' We need aliens ' should've been as a protest on t-shirts during the making of the film ! Instead it's done in a style that elimintates the middle-man , or middle-martian , so that Ito ( yes , a director called Ito , who in reality directed one of the worst films ever Monster-a-go-go ) can get many shots of outside in the wilderness and so-so scripted fighting in the cabin . I don't even remember if I made it all the way through to the end . Looks like They don't get very far with this stuff - the filmmakers , I mean . At least the stock music is cool . |
510,981 | 453,068 | 102,057 | 4 | disappointing years later , probably my least favorite of Spielberg's big blockbusters | Seeing a film that doesn't work directed by Steven Spielberg is still more interesting , up to a point , than watching an average work by a lesser filmmaker with similar material . Hook is probably one of those films that also probably worked a little better for me when I was younger ( I even saw it in the theater as I recall ) , and had that combination of high flying special effects and kiddie humor and heart that made for a good enough time . But seeing it on TV recently I come across , maybe like Robin Williams's character early on in the film , not connecting with those same nondiscriminatory reactions ( in other words just happy to see something colorful and big with over the top actors and ideas ) . By now , however , I've seen too many of Spielberg's films up to now that speak to his themes of re-imagining escapism and of a father losing responsibility to more satisfying , more entertaining heights than this . The film has its moments , usually among the cast of kids that make up the Lost Boys , but it's also adrift in its huge production design , lackluster screenplay , and sometimes odd choice - or rather portrayals - by the principle leads . Williams himself isn't too bad as the Peter Pan of the picture , as an adult without much heart who has to find it in the midst of finding his kidnapped kids in Neverland . He is re-introduced to Tinker Bell ( Julia Roberts , decent but far from really being memorable ) , and of course the title character played by Dustin Hoffman with enough ' ham ' to feed a starving family . It's hard now to take him too seriously as a villain when even as a kid he seemed a little too goofy for the part . Bob Hoskins interestingly enough is maybe a bit better as Smee , Hook's main underling . The film's main action centerpiece for almost all involved , where Peter Pan and the Lost Boys finally take on Hook and his crew , is an action-filled extravaganza that seems to not really have the focus of Spielberg's better set-pieces in other films he's done . This is contrasted with bits of comic relief by Hook and some others in the Lost Boys that are hit and miss . And the special effects themselves , while a nice precursor to what Spielberg would work with later in the 90s with his Jurassic Park films , aren't enough to support the flaws elsewhere . Mostly in the script , to be sure , where perhaps some of the lack of putting together stronger , less clichéd characterization with the fantasy and un-needed scenes , rubbed off on the director and his style . Would it be a good time for kids ? Maybe , but then many of Spielberg's films are at least eye-candy and at most grand-old times where fantasy and adventure / comedy / drama all mix together for something memorable . Indeed , his were some of the first ' real ' films I can remember seeing and getting into , even the slightly darker and rougher Indiana Jones pictures . But even as a kid my enjoyment of Hook was mostly for surface pleasures - and being a big fan of Williams at the time - and the memories don't stick as well fifteen years later . Call it not being able to be a Peter Pan or returning to Neverland or whatever , Hook is at best average Hollywood escapist fare and at worst an overlong , lacking in focus family-fantasy film that shows the lesser side of Spielberg's gifts as a storyteller and artist . |
510,962 | 453,068 | 144,117 | 4 | the flamboyant style and few drops of originality brushed over | The Boondock Saints was a film a couple of times while watching it ( not early on , but midway through and around the last twenty minutes ) I wanted to turn off , but I didn't as I wanted to see what might happen next . Perhaps that's from the crime / action film fan I am , but the set-up to the film is a hook : the MacManus brothers ( Sean Patrick Flannery and Norman Reedus ) are regular Catholic church-goers who also frequent the local pub . One day , after contemplating that God does not rid the world of the ones who are really the wrongdoers , they go out and do it themselves - quasi-vigilantes with a kind of spiritual morality at their sides . The mobsters that they're wiping out are connected , and it leads to an investigation being started by the eccentric / gay Detective played by Willem Dafoe , and also an all-out-war escalating with the hiring of a crazy killer ( Billy Connolly ) on their trails . So , for the first fifteen to twenty minutes of watching the film , the hook had me in , and while I didn't think of it as particularly dynamite film-making , it did attempt at a realistic beginning of the lead's lives and conflicts . This , unfortunately , did not hold . The problem with how The Boondock Saints unfolds is that at many points in the film it doesn't know how to balance the elements of comedy and tragedy , and gets morality mixed up in it all . One reviewer said its like Natural Born Killers with a moral . But un-like NBK , the film doesn't have any particular ' point ' to make , up until the end which becomes very muddled . For example , the Willem Dafoe character - he plays this role wildly , sometimes smoothly , and in some scenes he basically held the framework together . But the script doesn't give him much else to go ; is he funny , operatic , for real ? Writer / Director Troy Duffy has him chasing his tail every which way . Unlike in a smarter , more experimental film like NBK , Duffy in an ironic sense plays it safe with the story . The script has also been compared to Tarantino , and that is a relevant comparison to make . The film-making style itself is not necessarily a QT knockoff ( too many big-style camera moves , and a poor soundtrack sorry to say , there isn't much patience or true daring ) , but the script does have that sort of realm of it . The F-word is tossed around like candy ; the bad-asses in the film are made out to look like ' real ' bad-asses ( see Connelly , one of his oddest roles ) ; and there is plenty of action to go around ( although I'd say , at least in comparison to Pulp Fiction , that had less action , with better results than this film ) . I wouldn't mean to make comparisons , but it would give people a better idea the near naivety of the filmmaker towards the audience . What's the moral in the end anyway , that justified killing is OK if its connected with Catholic revenge and justice ? Whatever points are being made in the film are made early on and then lost in most of the second and third acts . It's not that there isn't some talent in Duffy's writing or direction , or that the actors don't do what they can . Yet there is such a kind of formula to it as well , even in the more unexpected scenes . The Boondock Saints does have its cult audience out there to be sure ( some consider it one of the best films ever made ) , but it is too ' cool ' and ' smart ' for its own good . It's like the horse that you're friend wanted you to bet in on , and then after its impressive first stretch it folds , and then trips over . I almost wished at times I could like it more while watching it , but I also know that there are better , and less exploitive , original genre films out there . |
510,507 | 453,068 | 71,396 | 4 | definitely not a good movie , but could it have been better ? maybe | Willard Huyuck , and collaborator / wife Gloria Katz , never got a career going like buddy George Lucas . As a writer they got to pen some of his works ( American Graffiti and Temple of Doom , even allegedly some uncredited work on the first Star Wars ) , but on their own turned out mostly either bad work , like here , or fun bad work like Howard the Duck . Messiah of Evil , as was titled when I watched it , is a muddled picture about a woman who comes to her artist father's seaside home , only to find he's not around but has left a lot of notes about the horrors that have come unto the area , and soon enough there's dead people coming out at night to claim those around the area . It's muddled , for one thing , because the way the dialog is presented , sometimes in narration and sometimes just badly recorded , comes off like its meant to be amateurish ( or , at best , right out of a MST3K movie ) , not to mention in the bulk of the performances ( albeit character actor Elisha Cooke Jr pops up for a couple of scenes as a town nut ) . And yet , even with the overall flaws of the film , plus the silly concept of a blood-red moon and all that nonsense with the design of the house , there are some notes that hint at a better movie . Shots like the one looking down that white corridor with the figure at the end , or the one girl wandering through the empty streets with a red tint , or the big horror scenes at the supermarket or an even creepier scene at the movie theater . These are interesting bits that show some artistic promise on the part of Huyuck and Katz . Unfortunately , as it would seem , these bits don't add up to anything substantial for either a guilty pleasure or as something so trashy that it would work as some bizarre cult film . It's probably forgettable by most film-goers for a reason ( or , for that matter , why it was found by me on a double-feature Alpha video DVD with Sisters of Death ) . Not the worst , but not good , it's 70's knock-off drek . |
508,387 | 453,068 | 443,489 | 4 | a disappointment , even if my expectations weren't high to begin with | I should say it up front , I don't dislike the R & B of the period , as is given tribute via Dreamgirls . I liked hearing the harmonies of groups like the Supremes or other soul groups ( I'm assuming Eddie Murphy's performance is inspired by a mix of James Brown and Otis Redding , or others I can't think of right now ) . I never heard of Dreamgirls before the movie came out . I decided against seeing the movie in the theaters , not because of any outright bias against the actors or the potential of the songs , but because of the trailer . Sometimes a theatrical trailer can sort of spell out , boldly , what the big picture will be . It was something that didn't appeal to me most of all because of the absolute , dreadful appearance of safe , conventional appeal . One might think the director of challenging efforts like Gods and Monsters and Kinsey might try and make a musical with more verve , more soul , more " UMPH " , if that's the word . And as a director , Condon did pretty much meet that expectation . What I didn't expect , and what ended up annoying me about Dreamgirls , is how much the performances , with maybe the slightest exception , fell flat on itself . It's a subjective thing , of course ; there's been praise to the sky for the work that Jennifer Hudson and others in the film have done in presenting the usual rags - to - riches - then - some - more - trials - and - tribulations musical story . Which is nothing I can really blame anyone on , as the film does appeal for a core audience that can't get enough of BIG vocals , BIG numbers , FLASHY personalities that pop and go into the , well , expected for 2-dimensional parts ( if that ) . But , for the life of me , I could not stand most of the characters , or the actors playing them , in Dreamgirls . Jennifer Hudson has been praised most of all , given accolades as a new rising star following her stint on American Idol , and with vocals that , basically , go to a vocal volume that is impressive . But volume alone does not a good musical performance make ! I never believed her as Effie , not once , except as , in a way , like some big near parody of one of these bigger-than-life and bigger-than-Pete's-sake-ego black women who are so stubborn that it's about as hard as hell to have any sympathy . The character of Effie is meant as the pivotal one , the one whom has the BIG personality , and ends up making a BIG mistake . But Hudson can't fill the shoes , as she just doesn't have the acting talent for it . She was chose for her singing skills , which for her means to belt out every number like she has to reach even the little guy in the back row in Giants Stadium . Aside from the fact , like everyone else , she has to sing such songs that have only so minimal a range with lyrics and tone ( the most prominent number , in the ' break-up ' scene in the middle of the film , stops the film in its tracks , and not in a good way ) . I'm in the minority , but she's one of the worst things about Dreamgirls . But on the flip-side , there's another actor , Jamie Foxx , who despite his actual talents , both at acting and as Ray showed singing , is probably just as ineffectual and , dare I say it in his own way , dull in the part of the domineering manager of the Dreamgirls . There's practically no range for this character for Foxx to play in , and has for of the film the exact look on his face , as , through also fault in the script , goes through the motions as with every other bio-pic of a star group of the past . Only the ending tries to give any dimension , which by the end is far too late and even awkward . Beyonce and the other actress do maybe a little better , which is to say they're adequate in the parts . Only Eddie Murphy , who in a sense is just playing a sort of abstracted version of his egocentric self from many other movies he's been in ( and better ones , ala Bowfinger , also speaking of himself in the third person ) , and for his musical numbers does add a bit of a lift to the proceedings . I almost expected from some of the early Murphy / Lightning scenes that the movie wouldn't be very much special , but at least could be easily watchable . Not a chance ; as much as I would want to admire a movie with soul about the soul era's glory of the 60s and 70s , it lacks the passion that could make it a real contender in a time with so few musicals . The trailer also tempts that this will have some strong dramatic direction . Here , too , Condon falters where there needs to be a stronger vision , and he doesn't pull it off ( the montages , for example , of the rising star variety for the Dreamgirls in the mid 60s , feels as shallow and empty as anything I could imagine in a summer blockbuster ) . Now , a lot of people will like this movie , a lot . Maybe I'm just not entirely in the demographic . But Dreamgirls , for me , makes a fatal flaw for a movie musical - the fun and spirit and melding of what works on the stage to the screen clicks off , and the chance for the unexpected is null and void . It made me feel depressed in its lack of respect for the viewer overwhelmed with clichés . |
510,706 | 453,068 | 461,045 | 4 | they should've called it ' Citizen Rib ' | . . . Wow . How did this get on IMDb ? It's an amateurish , crazily written and just downright sophomoric comedy that had it been written by a white guy would be the most racist thing ever made since the days of the minstrel shows . As it stands , it's somehow kind of clever , in parts , like some kind of wacky exploitation movie . It concerns the ' lovable ' old Slappy ( GL McQuary ) , who runs the Outhouse , a rickety fast food joint that's in trouble over 10 , 000 ( and one cent ) due in back-taxes and will be shut down if the money isn't paid . There seems to be no real solution until an accident involving a pound of dope is dumped into the rib sauce . . . OK , aside from the premise , is it funny ? Actually , it kind of is , in that guilty pleasure sort of way , like seeing something so off the wall that it couldn't work any other way . At the same time its writing is ponderous , the acting is just one-note all the way , and there's just one stereotype thrown around after another . I'm not saying I necessarily want there to be a redeeming force in the midst of this Outhouse Rib shack , which has the sensibility of humor akin to the lowest degree of the Friday movies ( there's even a character that seems ripped off of a spoof of a Menace 2 Society character in Don't be a Menace . . . in the Hood ) . But it is , by design of how it goes , mind-boggling . It's simply one of the dumbest ' satires ' I've ever seen , although it does make me very hungry for some ribs , with sauce of course ! |
509,934 | 453,068 | 120,832 | 4 | not a very good memory of this one , except for the beginning | Not the worst that has come from director Brian De Palma , actor Nicolas Cage , or screenwriter David Koepp , but certainly not as memorable as it could've been , Snake Eyes is a thriller that shows up every now and again on TV . I watch it for a few minutes and then get sort of a memory from seeing it in the theater . How I remember it may give an indication of how both remarkable and unremarkable it was . The opening shot , which is usually most remembered , is a daring feat of cinema from a director like De Palma , and does give promise to something big and exciting . We right away get immersed into this larger-than-life atmosphere , with Cage as a smooth talking , high-charged operator as it were schmoozing with people but always on the move . Meanwhile , De Palma makes sure we meet a few essential people ( i . e . Gary Sinise's character ) while not losing the focus of the shot ( s ) . One might almost think to compare with it Scorsese's own virtuoso long-takes in Goodfellas or even those long-takes in European movies . It might look like De Palma's looking for an angle with this . Unfortunately , the rest of the film doesn't really add up to the strengths of this shot . The film is really a kind of pot-boiler murder mystery with Cage conducting the investigation , asking questions , but not getting straight answers . There is the subsequent twist in there with a certain character who one might think of as " oh - should've - seen - him - coming - and - did " . There is conspiracy in the story , which sounds intriguing , but its all very much sticking to a formula or convention that doesn't make it stick out much . And as much as Cage might try in his part , the supporting players don't do much in the way of backing him up ( save for Sinise ) . While I was not as disappointed by the film as say , for example , Ebert was in writing about it , it wasn't something that really had me excited or entertained by it overall . It was just another summer movie to check out back in 1998 , and maybe tape off of TV , but never to really watch again , which is really the most damning that can be said about the picture and its director ( who's better films are really more enjoyable on repeat viewings ) . There's a lot that was going on in the structure and plot , but it didn't add up to much for me . |
509,324 | 453,068 | 482,606 | 4 | alternately subtle / ambiguous , and badly stylized and ultimately pointless | For a first-time director Bryan Bertino has a lot to learn , but there are some points for trying . He loves the genre , and according to interviews , wanted to give a 70's slasher movie feel to his film the Strangers . It's about a newly engaged couple who are a little uneasy about this next step ( she is , anyway ) , and then while at a cabin that is his family's old place are harassed / stalked / hunted by three young psychos - all wearing masks - and over the course of a night make their lives a living cat-and-mouse game of hell . With this premise , Bertino does do something interesting at the start , which is to do something one usually doesn't see in horror , which is to make some subtly in the script , the interactions with the characters played by Speedman and Tyler . What isn't said is even more powerful than what is ( as is the case in general , however in a familiar mode , once the suspense starts ) . And there are some genuine scares and creepy bits spread throughout , mostly in the " is that what I think it is in the background " sense . Bertino does quickly master the jump - at - the - little - to - damn - huge things method of horror . What he doesn't master , at all , are some basics of directing . He has hand-held going through the entire feature , even during the opening scenes where one might want a little calmness with the camera . Where a stedi-cam might provide some more easy access to the characters , it's all distracting to see the camera moving about from side to side and up and down . Where his ideas are trying to reach back to trashy horror , his approach is amateurish . Perhaps if you're a novice to the genre a lot of the scares provided , as well as the violence , will seem original and shocking . But as someone who's seen his share of horror , I can say with some certainty that he treads some really familiar ground here . The big " gotcha " midway through is from a genuine mistake on the part of the protagonists , and aside from that it's business as usual . Yet what drags this pleasantly usual horror flick down further is that the director cheats the audience at the climax / end scenes . He tries to do something " different " to make it seem like a more realistic or random tale of horror by having the villains take off their masks , and then not showing what they look like to the audience ( save for one girl who is seen in darkness earlier in the film ) . This , and then a scene with Christian folk who run into the killers on their way out , make for a really frustrating catharsis . At the end of all of these shenanigans , what's the point ? That ' real-life ' violence is horrible and without a true face ? Bolderdash , I say ! |
507,869 | 453,068 | 365,686 | 4 | Guy Ritchie : the bloke who heard voices | That line refers to a book on M . Night Shyamalan titled " The Man Who Heard Voices . " It's my personal professional opinion , not as any kind of psychiatrist but as a humble hobby-interested movie critic , that Guy Ritchie could join that club following his film Revolver . What voices I can't quite entirely say - maybe it's just the crazy auteur in him trying to get out of his wild post-modern B movie skin , that or some of Madonna's Kabbalah influence , or even just the cliché with the game of chess - but all come together to form this weird mess of a movie . It's not something that is outright detestable , at least from start to finish . Its dreadful droning on only becomes really present in the second half , where the mildly enjoyable parts start to wear off . Because inside Revolver is a reasonably interesting B-movie , plain and simple . A low-level gangster , Jake Green ( Statham , formidable at best ) gets out of jail following a seven-year stint in solitary ( shaving half the time off ) , and finds himself in trouble with a former gangster played by Ray Liotta ( Mecca or Macha was his name , I forget which ) , and then finds himself in the constant , bleeding-dry debt of oblique loan-sharks ( Andre 3000 and Pastore ) . Then there's some gang wars going on about with Liotta and some Asians , and then a hit-man who's really super-duper good save for one crucial instance , and an ending that just , um . . . ends , sort of . That's all I could make out of most of the movie . The rest is pumped with a kind of stylistic vigor attributable to steroids and other medications . For a short while near the start of the picture ( i . e . almost the whole first quarter or third ) , Ritchie has a handle on some of the more dramatic elements , the performances from Statham and Liotta , and even the pretensions aren't too meddlesome at first . . . At first , that is . Until Ritchie makes a crucial error - he replaces plot all with metaphor , subtexts and outer-texts and rabbits pulled out of hats . It's bad enough that he chooses an overbearing soundtrack , ranging from composer Nathanial Mechaly and classical music tracks . But after a while even what should be just crazy exploitive fun turns into just gobledy-gook . A scene that's meant to have some great significance and psychological depth , like the climax , is the nail in the coffin . Ritchie seems to put a lot of trust into this concept of " the Game " , and how it relates to con jobs , gangster life , who dies and who goes , what's going on here or there , and who says to live or die . Maybe this could be intriguing , in the proper clarity . It's almost as if Ritchie gets in the way as a director by not going for just one subject for a short while as opposed to hammering it away and then with a THWAK overdoing it with visual flamboyance . What is all this ? What's up with the animated sequences , aside from a cheap homage to Kill Bill ? Why do the actors seem so monotone so much of the time - do they realize how plodding some of this is ? What characterizes Ritchie at his best - which isn't as a great filmmaker but a pretty enjoyable mish-mosher of the crime genre - is some sense of fun , if not humor , about things . Taking himself so seriously here , and overloading with the kind of symbolism and heavy context that one needs a dictionary or a math book , the value of the story drops drastically . One wonders if this will be the last time we hear Ritchie's " voices " , or if they may return in the guise of a perfectly good British crime thriller . It's a semi-watchable disaster . |
509,660 | 453,068 | 389,860 | 4 | A Sandler Carol ; some laughs , but way too much ' message ' to recommend | Now here's something rather paradoxical . I saw the trailer for the new Adam Sandler vehicle , Click , and it was by and large pretty funny , while obvious , and giving the impression that it would be a straight-out comedy . The set-up to the film isn't bad at all , and is sort of promising . But there's something troubling about what is even more obvious as the film goes along . It may be a matter of minutes depending on how soon it might click , no pun intended , what is going on with Sandler's character Michael . And Christopher Walken's ominous , crazy character as the kind of guide for him also brings ahead some clues . It's typical , of course , but it might have been able to bring some more creativity than ended up happening . As it is , I found myself feeling uneasy throughout the third act as Sandler's character has his remote fast-forward through many years and events leaving him in a perpetual sadness until you-know-what with a formula like this finally kicks in . That a lot of this is really overly sentimental and very movie-message like is disappointing , as the filmmakers try to turn around a usual Sandler comedy on its side for the ' Carol ' side of it . That it's all wrapped up in this schematic of the film's structure really brings the film down in a way I haven't seen since Sandler's worst film 8 Crazy Nights . Luckily , when the film IS funny and Sandler and his hit or miss screenwriters get some jokes that work , they do almost as well as those of his ( compared to this ) classic 90s movie work . True , there are only so many times one can watch a dog have his way with a cushion , but the gag works once or twice . And there are some unexpected bits in a kind of unspoken way in Sandler's films that do spark up some laughs from the practical one-gimmick . Sometimes , too , I even found myself having big laughs when no one else in the theater had them , which I took as a good sign . Plus , the cast is , albeit a little ' uh-huh ' , not too bad at all for what they're required for ( which includes , yes , Sean Astin in a speedo ) . In fact , if the entire film was just from the first turning point of figuring out the remote to when it ' turns ' on him , so to speak , it would be a very good ( though short ) movie , with at least one or two memorable bits . But in its total running time , my patience wore thin far too many a time , leaving me at the end remembering too much what didn't work than what did . In short , it's one of Sandler and company's lesser works . |
510,762 | 453,068 | 448,011 | 4 | one word can describe this movie for non Bible-thumpers : cracked | Attending a Saturday night screening for Knowing in its second weekend of release I noticed that the theater was fully packed . My first thought was that since it is a Nicolas Cage movie and from the commercials and previews looks to be pretty blockbuster-action style stuff happening that it might make for a good weekend night viewing . But as the movie went into its last couple of reels I had to wonder : did these folks really know what they were getting into here ? Did they realize beforehand , and approve , of how much Knowing takes its BIG plot points and some of its themes from Revelations and Genesis ? Or that for most of the running time what's going on takes such a giant leap from science-fiction into conspiracy-nut territory ? It's hard not to talk about what happens in the ending , but I may have to by the end of this review . First a summary : a widowed MIT professor ( Nicolas Cage , a usually good actor looking faker every movie with his cropped plant hair and plastic surgery ) looks at a page that his son got from an " unearthing " of a Time Capsule that an elementary school left underground for 50 years to be discovered in present day . The page is just numbers , but there's a pattern . It's freaky : the numbers signal catastrophes ( i . e . with 2996 people dead ) , and it leads to other possibilities , such as what the other numbers that seem to not pose any kind of meaning at all mean - and it leads , eventually , to Cage discovering what it all leads to . . . Yup , you guessed it , end of the world . Not just Earth but all planets in the our solar system . The frustrating thing though in Knowing is that for at least a short while there is some promise in the material . Sure , it's kooky to see Cage going through all those numbers like a nut - it makes the Number 23 look almost reasonable in comparison - but Alex Proyas , the director , makes things tense and strange and possibly leading to something complex . In fact the first half contains a relatively awesome sequence : Cage is stuck in traffic and an airplane crashes right across the highway , and he runs through the wreckage with people burning and flailing about and it's all in one shot . Some may not notice that it is all in one shot , which makes it all the more remarkable a feat of direction ( the visual FX are compelling too ) ; it's practically Children of Men amazement in terms of a single visual demonstration of a nightmare on film . But then as more of the plot unfolds - it would appear as if the grown-up kids from Twilight are after Cage's son , not a good actor at all I should add , for some reason and even give him a vision of hell that is half nifty and half bat-s crazy , and it also involves a small black stone - it becomes silly in some part ( it doesn't help that Cage has moments of total calamity as an actor like when he's swinging the bat wildly or is totally bland in quieter scenes ) , and in large part just . . . I don't know what . It's leading to something that should be either a wild revelation or so preposterous that it makes the last four or five of Cage's movies ( i . e . Wicker Man , Ghost Rider , Bangkok Dangerous ) look sane and easy in comparison . Turns out , you'll either be in awe - and you know who you are ( i . e . Christian wackos , Rogert Ebert ) - or scratching your head . I was in the latter , but there's some sliver of me that wishes I wasn't just nearly losing it , laughing in my seat while everyone else was calm and accepting what was going on in front of them . There is some potential here to become a camp hit , something that would give the Mystery Science Theater guys a run for their money with the commentary . But it takes itself so seriously , and also has some scenes and sequences of actual good , intelligent direction from Proyas and his FX crew , that it turns into what it is : another Nic Cage movie mess that ends on such a note to make both Danny Boyle and Darren Aronofsky raise up their pitchforks and scream ENOUGH ! LEAVE THE SUN AND THE TREE OF LIFE ALONE ! If you're looking for it to be something totally wild and unhinged at least for the last quarter you'll get your money's worth . If you're looking for another masterpiece from the director of the Crow and Dark City ( or for that matter Cage's big-budget comeback ) , look elsewhere . |
510,794 | 453,068 | 319,829 | 4 | wow , Bob , wow . . . muddle extraordinaire , it needs to be seen to believed | Bob Dylan is certainly one of the great songwriters of the second half of the 20th century , or at least the most pleasurably enigmatic . His songs are poetic , but he doesn't consider himself one ( or does , depending on what IMDb quote you read that contradicts another ) , and like Jean-Luc Godard his output from the 1960s is consistently groundbreaking and with a lot that holds up for the right fan . But this goes without saying one thing : he can't write a screenplay for s . Sorry to curse , but it's apprporiate . The rules that might apply , if any , to screen writing can't be carried over into film-making . This is probably not a new thing to Dylan - he apparently wrote ( and directed ) a film in the 70s that almost didn't even get released in most sections till it was cut to just the songs - but he doesn't know how to keep from having his characters go on and on and on about this or that , making platitudes for something that is meant to make him ( playing a character named Jack Fate , ho-ho ) look all mystical and wise or just confused at not responding to anyone . If it is even written - sometimes it looks like the actors might be making it up as they go along - it is one of the worst screenplays of the decade . It goes without saying that it isn't all Dylan's fault . In fact , him and co-writer / director Larry Charles ( usually of the much more spot-on Curb Your Enthusiasm , Seinfeld and Borat terrain ) do have the occasional scene or line that does work , in its own Dylan-esquire way ( which is to say , I can't explain why it works except that a line is read truthfully or doesn't sound completel sy ) . Plot : not much , except that Fate is let out of prison early in order to do a benefit concert as the bottom-of-the-barrel pick of John Goodman's indebted promoter and Jessica Lange's shallow TV producer , and is hounded by the press ( or rather a press member , as a weird amalgam of Dylan's frayed connection with the press via Dude Jeff Bridges ) , while getting ready for a disaster in the making . This sounds substantial , but it isn't by that much . The compensation is that there are , of course , a lot of Bob Dylan fans out in Hollywood , so there's a lot of guest stars . Val Kilmer mumbles a lot , till making a great point about death and animals , while handling a snake . Giovanni Ribisi plays a quixotic Mexican rebel . Christian Slater's in for a couple of scenes . Don't forget about Like Wilson . And then there's Cheech Marin , and . . . oh , forget it . Strange thing is , I didn't necessarily outright hate the movie . It's more complicated a reaction than that . Dylan seems to be making his flaws here as unique as he would accomplishments ; seeing a scene like the one where he and Charles muck up a perfectly moving scene with a little black girl singing " Times They Are a Changin ' " by the whim of a brutal mother making her little girl memorize all Jack Fate songs like a robot by suddenly putting over it a flashback of Fate getting roughed up years before with a mumbling voice-over , couldn't happen in any other movie . And , to be sure , when Dylan and his band plays , sans the incomprehensible Dylan singing , it's still pretty good . But the problem is less outright hatred of the material but disdain for the self-indulgence . You can tell the actors and the people behind the picture think there's grand statements being made behind what looks like a mysterious Dylan-esquire fable about greed and socio-political status in the media and music and culture . But behind it is really pandering to the ideas without questioning them . Maybe there is more than I saw in the material , yet is there enough time during the day to give another viewing to look deeper , unlike Dylan at his best with his songs ? I'm not sure . |
510,994 | 453,068 | 101,615 | 4 | Vanilla Ice was practically everything wrong in the 90s in one homo sapien - and here's his rapped-up vehicle ! | How convenient that Vanilla Ice should star in one of the most entertainingly horrible movies of the past 20 years ? Pretty convenient , actually . Mr Ice , aka Mr . Van Winkle , had just exploded with his ripped-off " Under Pressure " sampled tune " Ice-Ice Baby " and was " hot " ironically enough , and was so big in the pop world that he got his own movie vehicle . As was to later befall the Spice Girls , Vanilla Ice chomped at the bit and acted as the new James Dean , a rebel without a cause but with plenty of banging ' pants designed by color-blind dwarfs and a leather jacket with more random messages and symbols then a dozen grad students writing a dissertation could decipher . This filmic ode to rebellion and getting the girl ( or not of course ) and , um , girl's fathers who are in witness protection for ratting on fellow internal affairs cops who come back to extort money , is so joyously crappy that it may live on in infamy in some circles , the campy dark-side to everything Eminem represented . Why bother comment on plot ? There isn't any . It's just a series of montages inter-cut with Vanilla Ice , with his partially shaved eyebrow and a look that is about as goofy as it is deadpan and serious and whatever - his - method - cowlick - head could think of , and the girl played by the hapless Kristin Minter in tow having some rebellious fun despite her father and family's protests . Why is this young man with his flashy bike and , um , " possee " of folk who spend there time waiting to repair bikes by Cheswick from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in a house made out of maps and globes and giant salt and pepper shakers doing in this small super-times-3 white town ? Who cares ? It's all an excuse to just laugh one's head off at what is a mix of total ineptitude of direction and " performance " ( the former provided by Mr . David Kellog who with one other exception has had his career taken up by helming straight-to-video Playboy Playmate bios ) , with dialog so classically bad that you'll repeat it for years ( " Lose the zero and get with the hero ! " ) , and oddly enough featuring some pretty interesting cinematography from Janusz ( Shindler's List , Spielberg films since 1993 ) Kaminski who performs so high a standard of work here that it almost goes to further mock the reckless trash on screen . It's a sight to behold , really , for anyone who happened to live through that surreal period where rap was dominated either by fellows in absurdly baggy pants ( MC Hammer ) or had hair that scared old women and small children ( Vanilla Ice ) , or for those wanting to see a time capsule of what-the-f rap songs punctuating plot twists that include the possible worst reading of a kidnapped kid's plea for help on an audio tape . ICE ICE CINEMA ! |
509,430 | 453,068 | 70,696 | 4 | needed more of Olaf capturing women and acting crazy , as opposed to the rampant sex . . . | . . . but then again that's exploitation cinema for you . The Sinful Dwarf has a great cover on the video-box , and a great guy playing the dwarf , with a face like Jack Black squished with Dennis Hopper ala Blue Velvet demeanor . He's totally crazy and wicked , and it's a delight whenever he's let loose on screen ( the scene where he uses his cane , manually so to speak , on one of the junky prostitutes is a scream ) . But the problem is that there isn't quite enough of him , or with the little weird dolls and toys , except as symbols . The story is thin as a rail : a married couple who like to ' do-it ' a lot ( as Olof looks on ) , and the old woman who runs the whore-house in the attic where women are naked and doped up for the customers wants to get her husband out of the way so she can bring her in on it - by sneakiness , of course , and the woman's own curiosity about the whole place being as creepy as a , uh , Denmark heroin-laded whorehouse . The sex , for some , will be part of the fun in the sleazy-term of it . But it just went on for much too long for each segment ( yeah , we get it , sex takes a while , move it along , more dwarf ! ) And it just becomes tedious , shot in a style that is of the bargain basement variety where the director's ideas include having the woman - being raped while totally dazed and burned out on junk - to be to kick wildly over and over while the guy humps away . This is almost like an exploitation story William S . Burroughs would write - on a bad day . It's fun in spurts , especially in the opening and closing ten minutes . But there's a lot of downtime where we're watching stupid humans talking , a lot , and it's not as much fun . The sex isn't Porno Holocaust bad , don't get me wrong . But there's also a reason it's as obscure as it is - it's got the good title and premise and no strong follow-through . If it did , we might have come across dear Olaf sooner , who makes such a crazy impression that he makes the flick worth watching on his own ( that and one or two pairs of ' assets ' on the ladies for skin-flick fans ) . Bottom line , it's another oddity - the only credited film for the director and writers - where it's dirty , cheap and crude , and with barely the minimum of guilty-pleasure status . |
509,318 | 453,068 | 405,163 | 5 | a truly ideal cast , a few funny moments , but it doesn't grasp its tone by the throat | Maybe the director , Michael Traeger , may do something better in the future , who knows . The guy's previous writing credit was Dead Man on Campus , a sub-par MTV dorm-comedy , so that doesn't say a whole lot . He's not exactly , as a character is named in the film , " Some Idiot " , but someone who knows how to put a strong cast together to try and elevate material . The problem is , he's made things so basic that there's not much room for much subtlety or real wit past the standards of the characterizations . It's like a sitcom with a bit more money and a bit more prestige , and somehow a lot of people ( including star Jeff Bridges , who originally passed on the project ) thought the film was a good idea AND didn't need more work script-wise . Frankly , there's too much narration . One of the ironies is that Bridges ' character Andy makes note of how in movies to " show , not tell . " Cardinal rule , for sure , but the very writer / director at the helm doesn't even really follow it ! It's one of the toughest aspects of a film to create worthwhile narration , but it doesn't help to go to an extreme and make it almost anything but . It's also a sign of lazy writing that he doesn't take the material where it really needs to go . This could be a razor sharp comedy , but too much of it , as with a sitcom , thinks it's funnier than it really is . For all the tiny moments of some comedy that do work out ( mostly in part to some of the unexpected turns from the actors , like William Finley who has never been that funny in a movie before ) , it's overloaded . The bottom line is the obvious writing and the direction , shot also TV-style with LOTS of extra light thrown on when not necessary , is completely reliant on the actors to do something with it . They do try , Lord , they do . How could you not with these people : Jeff Bridges , a true-blue talent who could read a computer manual brilliantly ; Tim Blake Nelson , wonderful character actor from O Brother Where Art Thou ; Joe Pantoliano , playing against type in good form ; Ted Danson , where's he been lately aside from being somehow terrific in this ; Patrick Fugit , who is the only one to actually underplay his part ( albeit mostly in the background ) ; Finley , as mentioned , maybe the best of the bunch . Others like Jeanne Tripplehorn , Isaiah Washington , the actress from Lenny ( I forget her name ) , Lauren Graham . They all have something worthwhile for the production . And at the end , for a comedy about making a porno in a small-town , it's mostly , kinda . . . bland . " Some Idiot " , not really , just Some Whatever . |
510,387 | 453,068 | 295,206 | 5 | to say it's corny , is . . . . nevermind | Cornman ! A superhero that we can all get around ! That is , if one actually watches the movie , which might be very , very , very few , as the movie wasn't even made by Troma ( although Lloyd does introduce the movie on the DVD , with full corn up the you-know-what gag thrown in ) . It was the first movie by Barak Epstein , and you can tell it was made on the fly , without much actual things like money , good props , make-up , actors , sets , etc . But somehow they made this very bad movie into something that is unusually fun and stupid and self-conscious . One scene that works very well on a level reminiscent ( if not anywhere as good ) of Return of the Killer Tomatoes is when the ' fourth wall ' is broken and the film crew is seen . The director goes up to the actor playing Cornman - horrible actor , of course - and tells him this won't work , and puts in another more muscle-bound actor in his place , and suddenly the fights get better , the guy is not a half-bad Cornman ( if there could be a half-good Cornman ) , and it's a good little rib-jab to the audience that it's knowing it sucks , and it rolls along with the crap-shoot . At the least , Cornman is worth watching , aside from the general badness of it , for the little things , like the villain with his blade covered in cellophane , or for the sidekick who's only function is to smell with his Pinocchio nose , or for the um , yeah , lesbian shower scene that turns pretty violent ( and hilarious ) involving a hose . It threatens at times to become too boring , but for those who want to stick with it the pleasures are all Mystery Science Theater bound . It's so bad it flips to good , then back-flips back to bad again , and then ends somewhat in the middle . Not worth a dollar , more like . . . 5 cents ? |
511,013 | 453,068 | 493,464 | 5 | style over substance . not exactly a triumph , but it's over it | Timur Bekmambetov's first American film isn't that far removed from the kinetic , hyperactive and sometimes just plain fing batty movies Night Watch and Day Watch . It's about the " Fraternity of Assassins " , who get their missions from clues hidden in a giant quilt , I guess , and it's also about Wesley ( James McAvoy ) , a regular white-collar worker , and his strange , dark adventure of self-discovery in this fraternity of who he really is - an instinctual , almost-mutant killing machine , meant for revenge by his mentor Morgan Freeman ( who , thankfully , is a villain for once in a great while ) . What is there to say about this then . . . . well , it's never boring . At least as far as I could tell I never did nod off . That being said , it makes last year's Shoot em Up look like a documentary in comparison . And this isn't necessarily a good thing ; a movie might be totally crazy with the over-the-top manners of killing people ( in this one we get bullets that curve , bullets that hit one another , heart rates reaching 400 BPS , and rats who bomb the joint , reminding one of the armed penguins in Batman Returns ) , but does it make it a really good movie ? Not in this case I'm afraid . This is a shame since James McAvoy is a very good actor , one who's very convincing , funny , and believable even when put in the most unbelievable circumstances . He practically carries the first third of the film on his own , this despite him being put in a totally crazy car chase that continues some of the ready-to-break rules set up here by Bekmambetov . And there's even some good star power with Jolie , acting like BIG ACTION STAR Angelina Jolie , and Freeman in a part too easily readable for his own good . But by the end we're given a plot and choice in technical style that knocks off Matrix , Fight Club , La Femme Nikita , a slew of John Woo movies , two turtle doves and a pear tree un-partriaged , and the last quarter of the film is just escalating , laugh-out-loud madness that skids the line between suspenseful and totally ludicrous , and eventually falls over the latter side . Would I recommend Wanted ? No , I wouldn't , at least if you're paying for yourself . But if you're invited , go along and take a chance . You'll leave a little shell-shocked , but you might not be totally sorry you went . Well , might . |
508,421 | 453,068 | 337,978 | 5 | it's not horrible to see it once , but it won't have much of a place in my DVD collection | Live Free or Die Hard will attract , and has already attracted , masses of fans of the Die Hard franchise or simply the 07 summer blockbuster crowd , looking for big huge explosions and John McClaine ( Bruce Willis ) as the cynical New York detective out to kill a lot of people ( and there are a LOT of people this time around , by hook or by crook or car smashing into helicopter ) in his mission to do whatever it is the screenwriters get him to do . Which is fine . But personally , the movie comes off like a bag of Doritos or a McDonalds burger that has ' New and Improved ' in big letters on the outer box , but the contents are stale and left out in the open air for much too long . It's not necessarily " good " for you to start with , but it should be something to make you feel good in the sense of more primal thrills . Yet I call shenanigans on this one this time . Like Superman Returns or particularly Terminator 3 , the studios via the writers are left to their own devices to think up a gimmick or situation , not so much any kind of story , to pluck their big headliner hero into , and the idea is that whatever this is the audience will be fine with it as long as they get the basics of what's expected . It's not that the fourth Die Hard installment doesn't try and go for big action . On the contrary , it's got more heavy-duty action than at least the last two Die Hard installments , and probably just as much as the first . But there's a catch - actually a double catch - in the movie this time . Instead of the real work being put into the script and casting and THEN the big action set pieces and violent fights , it's the other way around , and there's a sinking sensation even from the first few minutes that this will be all too formulaic . To give some credit where it's due , it's like looking at a used Jeep that's been re-assembled a couple of times : you'll get around in it , but it's not the most enjoyable of rides . The " new " ingredient mentioned before comes in the form of the threat this time being a high-tech scheme / plot to overthrow America by way of overriding the already over dominant presence of technology itself . The ideas behind this , of governmental control , of the abstract power of computers , are only thrown in of course as stuff to set up the picture , but there's more potential here than is really tapped - and it's potential that is already fishy by already seeming to be there as a device unto itself , no pun intended , as opposed to actually leading to other things in the movie ( ala in Die Hard 3 the ideas of racism , the " other " and so on ) . The only thread that continues through all the films , and maybe to a more successfully ridiculous degree this time , is money . This time the big-time ex-White House terrorist played by the practically straight-faced villain Olyphant is after billions and billions , or maybe just wiping out the system altogether . But unlike in at least the first and third installments ( I haven't seen the second one in a while ) , it's left goofily as just a sidebar to lead up to an uber-conventional climax in an airplane hanger with the key players . Really though , even if this weren't necessarily a Die Hard movie , and it still had all the same plot elements , it would still feel re-cooked : the father over-protective of the daughter not seen again until needed for the plot ; the obnoxious sidekick - here so obnoxious it hurts even in supposedly funny scenes from Justin Long ; the sassy female 2nd banana to Olyphant played by Maggie Q , who is almost a ninja cyborg as opposed to a human being ; the ' man in charge ' at the government agency two steps behind the protagonist and antagonist ; and , disappointing considering it's Kevin Smith , the oafish secret guy who pushes the plot just a little more along . I'm not opposed to big mega-buck franchises pumping out another feature from a series I've admired for a while , and I'm sure if there are others in the future ( matter of fact Indiana Jones 4 comes out next summer ) , I'll likely be there again to plunk down a few bucks and see what comes up . But with Live Free or Die Hard , as stupidly watchable as it can be in its big-bang action sequences , it's like a watered down treatment of a blockbuster for a series that should be the toughest around . When I was younger it was a lot of wicked fun seeing a high-octane movie like Die Hard with a Vengeance ( still my favorite of the lot ) with Samuel L . Jackson doing as much cursing as he did in Pulp Fiction . In this installment , the " F " bomb , considered a big no-no for the MPAA , is actually dubbed over ( in lieu of a PG-13 rating ) if uttered once or twice - with the perennial catch phrase cut off by a gun-shot - albeit still allowing for more " S " words than a sailor on sabbatical and enough ultra-violent moments to make probably the original director of Die Hard wince . It's a double standard , which is bad enough , but heaped on with a predictable plot that runs its course before the movie ends it leads to almost a kind of indifference . In one word , it's " Eh " movie-making . |
510,980 | 453,068 | 66,286 | 5 | good for a curio , not so much as a exploitation / biker flick | The Rebel Rousers a few times feels like it could be aiming for something more on its lunch-money used for a budget . It's got a very simple crux to the story - Bruce Dern and Cameron Mitchell as old school friends ( hey , they may be oh two decades apart , but it was college I guess ) say hello and go their separate ways at the start of the film , the former being a biker club leader and the latter a soon-to-be father of a possibly illegitimate child by Diane Ladd's character . Then , some of the bikers one day find the two in a car , take them down to a beach , and beat the crap out of him for just , well , being there . He slugs off to get help while the other bikers race to see who'll get their ' time ' with her , with Jack Nicholson's Bunny ( ho-ho ) vies for the prize . This crux is given some actors who actually say very basic lines of dialog with some conviction and faith in the material , but not much . Some of the acting , or at least casting , is a little strange though . Nicholson is given the top billing on most VHS releases of the film , but his is a supporting role that is like RP McMurphy from Cuckoo's nest with his wonderful sarcasm replaced by striped pants ( which the director decides to use to block some shots ) . There's also the versatile Harry Dean Stanton among the pack , with possibly the most ridiculous get-up in his whole career . It all leads up to a climax that includes a fight , but also a letdown in not having the bikers square off against the Mexicans who show up with their pitchforks on the beach after finally being alerted . All of this is up for good times in the B-movie guilty pleasure sense by the sound of it , and everything that can be made as ' surface ' as possible is used for dramatic or just ' there ' effect ; Mitchell and Ladd's characters have not much else to say except the baby and marriage ; the bikers , aside from Dern and possibly Nicholson ( who when he does have a line or something to do is very funny ) , are hard to discern with any distinguishing characteristics ; the police are ( amusingly ) very limited to a Deputy who's never around and a lummox with bricks for brains . There's even a very good scene where Mitchell gets no response from a bar full of patrons even in his beat-up , bloodied state . But the problem with all of the expended effort put into The Rebel Rousers is that it's too amateurish to be taken at all seriously as a fun time , if that makes sense . Producer / writer / director Martin B . Cohen seems to understand point and shoot ( and the previously mentioned stripe-pants blocking shots ) , and not much else . There is also the issue of lighting , to which it looks like the filmmakers didn't have enough money for or just didn't give a crap about - the climax is a letdown mostly for how you can't see a damn thing that's going on . It's ironic to think that Laslo Kovacs went from Easy Rider to this ( or vice versa ) . His music choices are mostly awful , at least a few supporting actors brought on look like they're improvising on the set ( and not for the better of the actual script ) , and any real guilty fun ( ala Angels Hard as They Come ) of seeing a bunch of bikers being really mean and ruthless is compounded by the Mitchell / Ladd moments which are un-evenly paced . But even with all of this , as a pre-Easy Rider kind of spectacle ( shot before it but not released till after it came out , a shelved movie for three years ) , it's not bad to look at as a curio piece for some of its main players . For fans of the actors who got their feet wet in these kinds of pictures it's of a little interest to see Dern as the unlikely protagonist and Nicholson as the grizzly heel , or Stanton in his sometimes whacked out state . That it leaves no real lasting impression is no surprise though , aside from being a mixed bag . |
510,829 | 453,068 | 295,297 | 5 | has its moments , but by far the least memorable of the films so far | Maybe it was keeping on Chris Columbus as director - he helmed the first Harry Potter and did an OK , if not that terrific , job at it - or in making it about as long as possible ( whether or not everything in the book , as someone who's seen the films but not read the books , I can't say , though it feels like they crammed it all ) , or in making it a wee bit too corny , but Chamber of Secrets is a bulky kids movie . It has an appeal for the whole family , as does the first one , and it has some charm and excitement in its Quiddich battle scenes , but it isn't really always the sort of material that might stay with you long after it's over ( unless , of course , you're a hardcore fan ) . It works at best in the form of the atypical sequel : same characters that like Potter just as much - his closest friends Ron and Hermonie - and those that don't like Snape and Malfoy . Although the film / story does set up " he-who-mus-not-be-named " in a good and ambiguous way , this is more in hindsight of the more recent Potter stories , where that is made much more clear and sinister . It does have some rousing bits in there , as I recall , John Cleese is particularly good as Nearly Headless Nick ( basically plopping a Monty Python performer in the midst of it all , which is the case ) and there's always Richard Harris as Dumbledore ( I still prefer him over Gambon , even though the latter is still good ) . But a lot of it seems much too cliché , even coming from the decent lot of Rowling subversions , and the whole bits with the character Dobby is just really cheesy . In short , it's the only one of the Potter movies I don't have a desire to see too soon , and if I ever do read the books I only anticipate it can only go up from here in quality . |
509,452 | 453,068 | 424,908 | 5 | if only the direction and the screenplay were as exemplary as Harris and the music | Ludwig Van Beethoven's music will endure for generations to come , even hundreds of years . Certainly his impact must still make waves in 2006 if filmmakers decided to once again give the Viennan mad genius of classical music another bio-pic . And hearing all the music of his that comes through the film - mostly the big middle chunk where Beethoven conducts his orchestra for his masterpiece , the 9th symphony - is always a pleasure and occasionally a thrill ( even if I may have been ruined forever by Clockwork Orange as I can't listen to the 9th without that film in my head as well ) . But it's a shame then that a film made about him creating such a work , and the magnificent end of his career , is shown in such a lackluster light . Sometimes the subject matter borders on the mundane , though really reaches more for the mediocre . There's nothing horribly wrong with any aspect of the film , but as I think about it more the directing is just as troublesome as the screenplay . It settles for what seems to be peering into this tense and fruitful collaboration between Beethoven ( Ed Harris ) and Anna Holtz ( Diane Kruger ) , a young woman from the convent and a copyist-would-be-composer . But in the end I felt unsatisfied with the look into these characters , as there wasn't anything interesting surrounding them in the sub-plots , and the director , Agnieszka Holland , is content to make everything very ' drab ' in how everything looks , through the camera and the production design . I felt like I was unfortunately watching a companion piece to the film the Libertine with its style of muddy soft-focus shots , and odd timing for doing zoom-ins and other shots meant to be ultra-arty . It only adds to what is inherently faulty in the script - it makes Beethoven part preachy , God-abiding ( and filtering through ) father figure to Anna , and part complete uncouth ass , who then changes on a dime whenever he sees Anna start to tear up or when he does something crude like ' mooning ' her . Surrounded by the dialog that only gives so much for Harris to work with are two minor sub-plots involving Ludwig's snide nephew , and Anna's secret love interest , an engineer . Both of these sub-plots work even less in conviction then the main story arch , and the nephew part is only given a couple of scenes , without much context with the rest of the picture . It almost seems like filler , and for a 104 minute movie it seems odd with that in tow . The final shot is also a real cop-out by trying for something ' unique ' when it's just a pretentious ending with Anna in the field , almost in spite of the harsh beauty in the music . In the meantime , Copying Beethoven is frustrating to recommend because of the pros that are with a movie like this . Unlike the Libertine , there is a memorable performance right in the muck of the subject matter . Harris is , in fact , nearly as a revelation as Beethoven as Thomas Hulce was as Amadeus . There's real soul to his work here , like in Pollack , and he makes Beethoven a true force of passion and madness and compassion all in equal bounds , almost in spite of what the script gives him to work with . And when he plays the music - and whenever Beethoven pops up - it becomes a pleasure . I loved seeing such a dramatically charged scene like that 9th symphony performance . But it's just one major note in an otherwise non-noteworthy effort . Indeed , if it weren't for Harris ( Kruger is just passable in her turn , no more or less a good performer then in Troy ) , I'd say this could make for a decent PBS weekday night movie , but not much more . A shame , really , but an interesting shame no less . |
510,670 | 453,068 | 914,798 | 5 | it's directed fine and there's some good acting , but it's also dim and silly and contrived | The Boy in Striped Pajamas , aside from it looking mostly like a slightly upgraded TV movie ( it's financed by BBC ) and featuring British and non-British actors not changing any of their accents for their characters , is also too obvious for its own good . Holocaust = bad is the basic message of the picture , and a message that apparently never sinks into the head of Bruno , the 8 year old boy who befriends Shmool , the boy of the title who befriends him across the fence of the concentration camp . It also seems to be a movie pitched at children more than adults , which would be fine except that it's not even a very good children's movie , unless they don't know much at all about the holocaust - which , perhaps is likely . Maybe my standards are too high after so many countless films regarding Nazis and the holocaust , but among the many of them ( Schindler's List by far the masterpiece and others like Jakob the Liar remake worse ) , this one is just . . . meh . Does it provide a look at how innocence had little place of the Nazi's plans against the Jewish people ? Yes . Does it have a point regarding good versus evil ? Maybe . It's scope is mainly centered on Bruno's experiences around the family house where his father ( barely one-dimensional David Thewlis ) is the Nazi soldier and his mother ( Vera Farmiga , almost two-dimensional but not quite ) who is horrified by what she finds out goes on at the camps . And , as well , about the kindness of some people who could not comprehend ( or just weren't up on the facts or too young , like Bruno ) the evil possible with the Nazis . All of these ideas and perspectives are fine . It's the execution of these on film , in drama , that counts , and the performances and the direction just don't add up . On top of this are some contrivances to the plot that keep things a little too thick for comfort . Maybe I just wasn't as emotionally invested in the ending as some other critics have been , but it starts as being pretty stupid - for Bruno to just casually dig his way into the camp and then slip on the camp clothes without anyone noticing is one thing - and then , the final straw , with the big lesson being delivered as a manipulative sucker punch to the parents as Bruno and Shmool are shuffled off to the gas chamber at just the exact moment they go into the one bunker . This is just a cruel twist , something done to drive tragedy into a story that doesn't provide much except for a feeling of " . . . what ? " If it touches other people who don't see any of the obvious lines drawn in Herman's script or direction , good for them . For me , it's a total emotional sham . |
507,847 | 453,068 | 66,365 | 5 | definitely not one of Sam Fuller or Burt Reynolds ' better days | It being said that Shark is far from being what co-writer / director Samuel Fuller envisioned is right on the money . Or rather , lacking money , because this film seems to have been made with change that fell from the pockets of the producers . It's another film that looks and feels like it was made with the grit and gusto of a man with a need to tell a story , but unfortunately it's quite compromised . On the DVnot too unfitting released by Troma - the special features go to lengths to explain what became of the film once it was completed , and taken out of Fuller's hands to even include ( at the START of the film ) a real lethal shark attack . That the film , ironically , is not the total disaster that Fuller thought it was once he saw what the producers did , is a credit to him and first-time movie star Burt Reynolds . Now , as long as you're not a stickler for little things like , say , continuity ( check out that beard , or how it withers scene to scene , for example ) , the film isn't a total waste . For one thing it still carries the memorably tough wit of some of Fuller's noir films of the 50s , and he still makes his mark on the film in spurts , as one can tell through its fractured , ultra low-budget qualities ( i . e . made in Mexico with a shamble for Sudanese sets , if that's what they are ) . He also gets a little cool gusto out of Reynolds , who would later bloom , so to speak , as a major star in his own right . Here , however , he's still finding his feet some of the time , so it goes without saying that it's more machismo and presence than real ' acting ' up on screen . He plays Caine , a mercenary gun seller with a predilection for wacky danger ( i . e . tossing dynamite out of his car to thwart those on his tail at the start ) . He gets recruited by a tempting female who offers him a chance to dig up gold in a sunken ship . . . all in shark infested waters ! When these scenes do finally come up after a lot of plot line subterfuge , it's hit or miss . Then again , this is long before Jaws , so if the temptation to hear a really rousing score over the underwater scenes does strike you , it speaks to not just that film's strengths but how Shark ! doesn't quite realize all of its potential . It wouldn't be 100 % fair to blame just the producers for the bits of fiasco , because even through what is quite good that Fuller pulls off on screen ( I liked the small chase in the village with the boy and the watch , and a few of the more blatantly exciting moments with Reynolds in his underwater garb ) , he doesn't have that much of a really terrific story to work with to start with . Maybe it's a combination of factors , but that it's Sam Fuller's weakest movie I've seen of his films is both a credit to what he could do with what could possibly have been a real Z-grade stinker and a tome to what he couldn't do with un-supportive , conniving producers . Probably worth a good , dumb time for drinking buddies , however . |
508,642 | 453,068 | 308,055 | 5 | kind of like a mixed garnish dish - lots of small pieces put together , good in parts , not filling on the whole | Watching Emilio Estevez's Bobby is a curious experience because I never really felt like I was getting a fully satisfying dramatic piece of historical artifice . It goes for the Altman scheme of things with the stories being multi-layered , but with no purpose for what is really at the core or with enough really fascinating and true moments to make it really worthwhile ( and , compared to Altman , who's style is usually as seamless as a pair of pants , he's much better at acting than at directing ) . But it's the kind of picture that I was glad I saw once , I guess , and if it were ever on TV I might check out a scene or two . What ends up being almost too frustrating about the production though is that it truly is one of the cases of the ' mixed bag ' , where some characters / scenes / performances are either quite good or surprisingly good or just adequate , and then some stuff just doesn't work at all . One of the problems is that Estevez thinks that having all of these stories , with it very much being in the ' period ' for political , economic , racial , international , drug , and just personal issues of sex and marriage , all thrown into the woodwork , will completely stick in the context of it being all before Robert F . Kennedy's assassination . His cast is so varied and loaded with stars , legends , character actors young and old and somewhat not totally known to some viewers , and with both surprises and disappointments to spare . What's to be made when your film has Laurnece Fishburne's scenes - perhaps more in due with the script - being less convincing and cringe-worthy than those with Lindsay Lohan ( who , while not a knock-out , is not bad at all with the limits she has to work with in her story with Elijah Wood ) . As usual we get a compelling turn , if a little muted , from William H . Macy and from Sharon Stone too in an infidelity plot . There are also two things quite unexpected I found - the scenes with Ashton Kutcher and the whole LSD storyline with the campaigners is hilarious , even as his character doesn't have anything to do in the climax ( a reminder of how good Kutcher can be in very small doses ) ; and Anthony Hopkins being underused and with nothing to do aside from hearing Harry Belafonte talk about getting old . I could see what Estevez was going for , which is glimpses into the lives of this wide array of personalities who all have at least some stake , however overly-conscious or subconscious or unconscious it might be ( it IS 1968 after all ) . And I respect especially what he does in using Kennedy's speeches in little spurts , like the coal-miner bit , and the ' violence ' speech put over a pivotal point . But a lot of times the term ' mawkish ' comes to mind , and mostly in turns with the script , not necessarily with the cast who either know instinctively what to do or just try a little too hard . It's particularly , however , with how he combines his dialog being spoken with Mark Isham's musical score , which I think is one of the worst sentimental-type scores I've heard in a long time . Ironically , as if in a schizophrenic state of mind , Estevez gets all of the songs in the film just about right , if not perfect for some scenes ( the Sound of Silence , used in an important scene , is a big exception , which just falls flat against the banality of montage , which also ironically is preceded by the real big climax using montage with audio more effectively ) . By the end I saw a lot of heart and technical effort put into a picture that really only amounts to so much , and with the highs and lows becoming too much to really call the film as either a success or a failure . It's not even ' just OK ' . It's basically a compelling , well-acted muddle that goes to lengths with sentimental over-kill and good intentions . |
508,453 | 453,068 | 171,363 | 5 | One of the best examples of how to NOT make a horror film | Ex-Cinematographer ( of Die Hard ) and now director Jan De Bont struck gold with Speed and while it wasn't gold , Twister wasn't a suck fest . This is . I sat in the theater whacting this and thinking too myself , is anyone getting scared by this ? I mean I understand that it could be scary to some , back in 1920 . But now , immune systems have been built up againt horror films , and while they don't have to be gems to be good , they shouldn't have to sucfk like airplane toilets anyway . The plot ( with very little to do with the original and the book ) involves a lady who can't sleep , so she goes to a big house hosted by a doctor ( Liam Neeson ) and with 2 other insomniacs ( Owen Wilson and Catherine Zeta Jones ) to find out why they can't sleep . But the doctor has more secrets that the others know , as the house becomes alive . Some good visuals can't make up the fact that it is really dumb , with a horrible script , not good performances and stupid scares ( the only one that was fair , which makes this film pass , is when Wilson looses his head ) . Definately not for sharing . |
509,657 | 453,068 | 348,150 | 5 | a film that risks for greatness but doesn't fly high | I can't say that I'm very much the Superman fan , at least in comparison to some other superheroes that I'm interested in . The whole saga and the like just never seemed all that compelling . But on the other hand , as films , the first two ( more really the first one ) were rather well done pieces of solid , Hollywood entertainment . While I wouldn't want this review to have to keep comparing to the Richard Donner film , certain things did strike me just on Superman Returns ' own terms . Director Bryan Singer has proved with his first two X-Men films that he's not ignorant in the ways of making compelling comic-book entertainment . But here he's got a bigger bill to fill here in terms of making a good enough script ( er , one with as much fun as intelligence for the audience ) , and a cast , aside from the plethora of special effects and visuals at his huge-budget disposal . I wish I could just turn off my mind and just take in everything as it went . As I walked out my friend asked me ' well , what did you expect ? ' Not much , actually , but that much wasn't even filled to what could have been . It's a bit frustrating too to come across a blockbuster like Superman Returns , because you can sometimes feel the ambition that Singer and his crew and cast are going for . And Singer does provide some interesting , sharp visuals at times . And , as well , sometimes he doesn't . In terms of just action-movie terms it is very well shot most of the way , and fans of the Superman lineage looking for a fresh 21st century feel might be impressed . But , unfortunately , Singer's own ambitions become part of the film's drawbacks . Arguably , the film's near two hour and forty minute running time is overdoing it , and despite the information that the script requires in the last several minutes , one too many an ending is delivered . Certain smaller scenes showcasing , more or less to decent effect , Superman's overwhelming ability to do ( predictably ) anything to serve and protect at all costs , are also not really needed . And the basic concept at root in the film , even in the ' must-suspend-disbelief ' world , is a little tough to swallow . Without revealing too much , under comic-book movie logic it falls a little , well , flat . Now , some of this could go by the wayside if the cast was at the best of abilities , or at least with the correct parts . I wasn't expecting another Christopher Reeve , of course , but it was hard for me to see what Singer saw ( aside from his apparent liking of his connection to Clark Kent's awkward / bumbling in Brandon Routh exactly . He gives off a quality of being more wooden and bland than can even be stood considering the man of steel's impervious " human " qualities . Kate Bosworth does what she can , though only so much due to what her somewhat conflicted role requires . A couple of supporting actors are also a little disappointing from Frank Langella and James Marsden . And surprising still is Kevin Spacey , who only occasionally sparks up the kind of appeal that went with his past villain roles . So , in a way , maybe it just all added up to something that worked against what I was going into the film for - it is not bad on the side of technical astuteness and finesse . But that part has to come up against a script with some rough , scatter-shot patches , and a other elements that practically drag the film into a sluggish pace . All of this , however , will be moot for the legions of Superman fans , I would say it would be worth checking out the film at least once on the big screen . But for the non-fans or just the casual moviegoer , I'd say if you do proceed know it might not be the big summer smash that's been hyped to no end for over a month . |
509,788 | 453,068 | 47,898 | 5 | Don't mind Lobo . He's as harmless as a kitten . | Strange to watch Bride of the Monster with friends and feel both the urge to pull a Mystery Science Theater 3000 commentary on it ( making jokes and imitating characters and movements and laughing inappropriately at times ) and the feeling that this movie wasn't as bad as I expected . At least , not as bad as some of Wood's other movies , which goes without saying that he's not undeserved of the title of " Worst Director of All Time . " His main body of work seen by people are of a kind that is of a by-gone era , of the B science fiction movie where effects were menial and acting was taken by actors who probably didn't even bother with classes ( take Tor Johnson as best example of that ) . But even at its best , which is saying a bit much , Bride of the Monster is a sci-fi flick that has some decent craftsmanship going , a cooky Bela Lugosi performance , and of course Tor Johnson as Lobo . It's hard actually to even describe the story , as sometimes the dialog meanders a bit into what's really going on . But what I got out of it is that Lugosi plays Dr . Eric Vernoff , who has found a way to harness atomic energy to create a " race of atomic supermen , that will conquer the world ! " He has his big , clunky , mute assistant Lobo take a reporter who crashed her car to his laboratory , and prepares her to make her the Bride of the title . But not if a certain hero can stop them , or not as case may be . This movie contains cheesiness that lends itself immediately to ridicule , and I knew this before I saw it via the scenes in Burton's Ed Wood where they show the octopus that doesn't work , and Lobo bumbling through doorways on the ' perfect ' take . And some of the looks on the faces ( oh those close-ups of Lugosi's eyes ) and body language especially by Johnson are too campy to miss , plus that ' octopus ' which ranges from stock footage to , uh , not working . But if there is anything going for Bride of the Monster , it's that it's actually a sort of good-bad movie , where the ineptitude is almost charming in its stilted , under-budgeted way , and that main speech that was quoted in Ed Wood " Home , I have no home " is actually quite cool in its B-movie sort of way . Even the ridiculous bits that pop up ( i . e . a police chief with a random parakeet on his shoulder in a scene ) aren't deterring enough to put it down like Wood's Plan 9 or The Sinister Urge . It's stupid fun that ends with a big bang , and might be Wood's best of his worst , so to speak . |
508,435 | 453,068 | 91,499 | 5 | actually directed fairly well . . . it's the writing that's " WTF " as they say | Ah , Stephen King , he made the right choice in not directing again . Perhaps it was just a fluke or a lark or one of those dares he took to see if he could make a movie as good ( or perhaps as crappy ) as some of the other mid-80s ilk that came out , some actually not bad like the Dead Zone and Pet Sematary , while some like Children of the Corn not quite so good really . So , he took one of his short stories and expanded it , unwisely , to a 98 minute length feature script and filmed it , in all its unwieldy glory . . . glory , I say , with that dose of sarcasm needed . Maximum Overdrive is total trash that's a blast to watch , and I almost would be more forgiving of it if it just wasn't so completely dumb-headed the whole way . The problem is not actually in the direction , oddly enough , but in the script itself , which is troubling for something that should be potentially intentionally awesome from King . It's like he cobbled together ideas from the likes of Chrstine and the Stand and the Mist and other works that we all know are just like this and added in trucks and rednecks to give it some " flavor " ( perhaps it not set in Maine is is a saving grace I didn't really notice ) . He also peoples it with Emilio Estevez , Pat Hingle , Yeardley Smith , and a bunch of other actors you probably will NOT remember , or even care to , gives them some laughable ( " We MADE You ! " ) and dead-pan-serious dialog that is not entirely laughable ( really , did anyone laugh when Estevez made that " Eat my shorts ! " line which was already dated when Bart Simpson said it ? ) And , finally , the trucks themselves , them like other random electrical devices directed by the rays of a wayward comet that will only be in the orbit , as we learn from the opening title card , for about 8 days , which have a logic that makes as much sense as a turtle solving a Rubik cube in two minutes . I wanted to get with what the trucks were all about in attacking as this random , evil force that comes only in King stories ( well , not only , but most prominently in the last thirty years ) , but too long the trucks spend just circling around the diner at the gas station , like cowboys in a perpetual loop circling around a group of Indians , and by the time they crash through the diners me and my friends shouted in unison : FINALLY ! It goes without saying some of the stuff with said trucks , like the one with the Green Goblin on the front , was cool . But as with so much stuff in the picture , you only go with it for so long until you pretty much say " alright , that's it , I give up . " If it had been shorter , and this isn't just some ' it would work better as a 25 minute Twilight Zone episode ' thing but it's close enough , like a Creepshow segment , it could be potentially amazing . But it takes too long to get where it's going , it retreads familiar ground , and only one or two moments actually POP with the kind of scariness that King himself promised in a direct-address to the audience where he proclaimed : " I'll scare the HELL out of you ! " Sad to say , he didn't . At the least though it wasn't boring and had a few good laughs . |
510,265 | 453,068 | 43,548 | 5 | the least successful of Kubrick's early shorts | There are some very small moments where one might find something of interest in Flying Padre , a small view of a father in a small village farming community who acts as part-time keeper of the peace , and part-time flying enthusiast . But it is not , per-say , for being as a Stanley Kubrick film . It was his second documentary , funded very cheap for an even cheaper profit , but unfortunately seems to be caught in a bind . It would be one thing to get some kind of interview or closer look at this man , but in the profile the only really exciting bits are when he's up in the air ( which does contain a few clever shots from right in the plane , ironic for the air-phobic Kubrick ) . There are staged scenes that are rather , well , silly , like when the Padre sorts out a matter between a little girl and boy . Is it cute , maybe , but it's not really interesting . Another problem , which may be for some more than others considering its very obscure stature , the quality of the picture is bad , and the amateurish style of the staging doesn't help matters . It would be one thing if , like in his last short doc the Seafarers , if there were some more marks to see of him as a filmmaker , or just in general interesting compositions . There isn't much of that here , only in the most minuet moments that pass by very quickly . In short , this is one that was done for hire , on the fly , and is not worth seeing unless you're , like me , a Kubrick die-hard . |
508,325 | 453,068 | 112,896 | 5 | quite a disappointment , as I recall | I remember seeing Dracula : Dead and Loving It in the theater - one of only two I had the chance to with Mel Brooks's films - and walking out just thinking " how could this be this lame , even for a kid my age " ? A fan of Brooks and Leslie Nielson may or may not find much use here . The gags , jokes , puns , physicalities and outright spoofed diddies are at the usual at-least-a-minute rate of the past Brooks comedies , but there are just more misses than hits . The bright spots come in very intermittent spurts from star Nielson , who may have just burnt out his comedic energy on the Naked Gun trilogy , and from Peter MacNicol , who does give one very funny scene involving a fly ( in general this and Ghostbusters 2 are his career highlights ) . But people who could be doing a lot better like Harvey Korman in the film don't at all . The style of the film is also a little sluggish compared to the director's past works , and when one of the misses comes , you can feel the dud hit ( i . e . " I think I just had a day-mare " , as Dracula wakes up ) . Not that in some spots one might neglect to grin or have a chuckle - and the nailing of the body in the coffin is a big comic set up and pay-off . But the times when the jokes miss , even as a kid ( and being more susceptible to the slapstick and satire comedy of Brooks on one level ) the overall effort is a mindboggler . One can only hope that Brooks will come back and write / produce / direct one last swan-song , aside from the Broadway convergence of the past several years ( and the Producers musical-movie is something else entirely ) . |
510,269 | 453,068 | 454,841 | 5 | shows what can be good - and not so good - about a remake | Maybe I shouldn't be looking to making overt comparisons to the Wes Craven 1977 cult film The Hills Have Eyes , of which this Alejandre Aja filmed remake has done over Hollywood style , and just look at it on terms of just being a horror film in and of itself . But even on its own I found this film to just not work for me , even as I recognized things that I admired about it . And maybe it's because I decided to watch the 1977 original earlier this week that that film is so fresh in my mind that I can't help but make comparisons . However , when you are remaking a film that already has a flaw or two , you can either improve , be on par , or just not be as good as that film , or just be so-so on its own terms . Co-writer / director Aja has a film here that does work for its target audience - the young teen horror fan crowd looking for a quick fix of gore and cheap scares done in a somewhat shaky-hand held camera style . But the problem for me was a little more elemental . For all of Craven's film's shortcomings - mostly by budget and time - was made up for by being a sharply entertaining exploitation flick , building on both the good and evil sides of the characters . This time , Aja is content with making a decent enough set-up for the first half hour or so , and then just plunging the viewer into a kind of checklist horror movie kind of layout . This is not to say he doesn't use the big-studio backup for some good ; the makeup by Greg Nicotero on the deformed mutant villains is very cool and creative ; the gore factor ( not that I was necessarily relying on it for scares , which it didn't really ) was very high and well laid out ; the performances by the family , for the first half of the film , are believable enough with the dialog . But the problem for me lies in that the second half of the film , where Aja could make this good versus evil struggle scary and intense , into being slightly boring . Not withstanding the fact that 80 % of the original is transplanted ( sometimes seemingly with the same shots and angles ) into the remake , the new ideas put into the film also aren't launched off with enough to really engage . And then there are the action / bloody horror scenes , where Aja has his fun pitting these quasi super-mutants against our can't-be-beat heroes ( one of which seems to survive and fight back with an incredible suspension of disbelief for one ) , but its not really that per say . So yes , there's more gore than the first go-around , yes , there are some added disturbing elements ( i . e . a rape scene , not as disturbing as in some films but gruesome enough ) , and yes , the twist factor is turned up to 10 . But with the turns of the horror-film screw , I just didn't get involved , even in separating myself from the original . And the fact that the mutants are very robotic-like in their pursuit of their semi fish-in-a-barrel takes some of the jump out of some of the could-be scares . It will please many , and if you are just a general horror film fan ( and R-rated I mean , it doesn't cheap out on that end ) you'll want to check it out ) . But it's a ' meh ' in terms of it being engaging film-making . |
508,805 | 453,068 | 74,312 | 5 | has a couple of noteworthy moments , but mostly boring , symbolic crap | I wasn't sure what I would get with Chinese Roulette , a little-known film from RW Fassbinder featuring one of the stars of the Nouvelle vague , Anna Karina , but I wasn't expecting this . I'm reminded somewhat of what a friend of mine says of Michael Haneke's movies ( while I don't entirely agree , I can see his point ) : " Nothing happens - nothing happens - nothing happens - nothing happens - something happens - nothing happens , end of movie " . While things do happen in Chinese Roulette - a film about two couples who come to someone's home for a weekend and one of the couple's children , a crippled young girl who became that way ( I guess it's insinuated ) from something her parents did has some kind of effect on the group of people in the house to do what she says leading up to a climactic mind-f of a ' what-if ' game - they're not of much consequence , at all . I didn't care about a single character in the film ( maybe the pretentious writer for a moment , maybe ) , not a single one , and that's part of the key to Fassbinder's problem . It's not direction , since that's actually something a strong suit for him , maybe too strong in some scenes where he pushes the ' intense-camera-zoom ' too far . It's just the overall feel and mood and the performances ; particularly disappointing is Karina , who is not just a great star of her time with her muse / ex-husband Godard but an underrated actress , who just spends a lot of time moving her eyes about thinking what's going on around her is interesting . Only the climactic game holds any interest - if only clinically - and it really only picks up ( the aforementioned " something " ) with the final question . Or , in another word , one that is too hard for some Fassbinder die-hards to mutter : boring , metaphorical clap-trap . |
510,521 | 453,068 | 481,536 | 5 | it's silly , crude , shocking , gross , surreal . . . and it's only OK | I'm not sure whether or not I expected Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay to better the first cult comedy from 2004 . While H & K Go to White Castle wasn't the prize taker for best pot comedy of the decade ( hopefully Pineapple Express will take that title ) , it was about as cool and witty and deranged and crazy a post Cheech and Chong romp as one could ask for , especially considering the director did Dude Where's my Car . The trailer for the sequel basically gave away the premise right away : Harold and Kumar , on a plane going to Amsterdam , are thrown off for being suspected terrorists , with Rob Cordrey's government agent saying in true one-dimensional tone , " Al-Quaeda and North Korea working together ! " The trailer was perfect on a first viewing . . . then wore thin by the time the film finally touched down completely . To make a blunt comparison - no pun intended ( OK , a little ) - it's like getting a baggie filled with some fairly good stuff , but also filled with a good many twigs and seeds . In other words , it's only about a little worth the energy to get up off the futon and get to the theater . It would probably make a better rental , with a bunch of friends wasted to hell ( this last part might not exactly be a compliment to the film as much as a necessity ) as opposed to a theater . The filmmakers - the first film's writers - pick up the story right where the last left off , following the love / hate friendship of Harold ( John Cho ) and Kumar ( Kal Penn ) , who this time have a similar climactic blow to Clerks 2 , and up until then are anxious nice guy and slacker horn-dog respectively who each have their own romantic flames somewhere out of reach . But at the same time the story / plot is a rehash of most of the jokes from the last film ( i . e . sex dream with a huge female pot-baggie ; in-bred white-trash stumble ; missed opportunities with the opposite sex ) , and they only allow for some few chuckles and thoughts like " oh , that was funny . . . I guess . " The one wild card that pays off incredibly well is Neal Patrick Harris . Here's a guy who doesn't submits himself to a " character " form of himself , who continues where he left off from ' White Castle ' as a has-been with a penchant for hallucinogens and prostitutes . Anytime he's on screen it's a riot , particularly here where the poster many have seen of him on a unicorn saying " What would NPH do ? " is given better context . There are also a good few belly laughs to be had with Cordrey's over-the-top Homeland Security agent , and a fantastic bit part from Chris Meloni ( yeah , Law and Order Meloni ) as a KKK chief . Yet more often than not the filmmakers rely on old-hat poop and genital jokes , and when they try and hit bigger targets ( i . e . the ' attrocities ' of Guantanamo Bay , George W . Bush as a pot-head , the state of terrorism in the US ) they fall flat or only work on a shallow level . Their targets are better on smaller playing fields , and they just don't have the stamina to contend with the level of satire that one sees , albeit a different form , on the Daily Show and Colbert Report . So , yeah , it's OK , maybe more or less depending on your comic preferences and how much you can take of either really spot-on gags or just really , really stupid ones . Bring a bud , and see how it goes , maybe . |
510,473 | 453,068 | 435,705 | 5 | tries , but is too mediocre and ordinary a thriller to get fun bad-movie leverage | I knew going into Next that it probably wouldn't be totally similar to Philp k . Dick's original short story the Golden Man ( matter of fact after checking out the synopsis of the story in comparison with the final product here they're only similar in that they both have characters who can see into the future and may or may not be under the control of the government ) , yet what remains here is an intriguing premise squandered mostly by someone who's more of a by-the-books Hollywood director , Lee Tamahori , who tries too much to make Next a conventional a thriller as possible almost in spite of its awesomely bad-movie tendencies . Nicolas Cage plays the title character , a magician in Vegas named Frank Cadillac ( named after two of his favorite things , Frankenstein and Cadillacs , a rather ludicrous explanation but why not ) , and who just wants to stay under the radar , even as he's fully aware of his own special gift : he can see approximately two minutes into his own future , what is directly around him at the time , and can stop it almost in spite of the fact that merely looking at it changes it in a way . There's two story lines competing for attention here , one is something that was probably on the leftover counter of the 80s action-thriller picture where the US government will stop at nothing to squash dirty Russian terrorists with no real demands except to set off nuclear madness . The other is the romantic sidebar with Cage and Jessica Biel , whom he gets involved with in a strange way in that he's seen her in the future long before other events ; at first she just finds him odd , then when the news is broken to him she has to re-think things , though of course not for long . Unlike other Dick adaptations , this one doesn't take place in the future , however it limits more of the possibilities for the science-fiction subversion for heavily gun-toting , high-flying chase and battle sequences that are just marginally satisfying and usually just this side of , well , bland . What does make it sort of watchable though is Cage , who has that " determined " look on his face , and is only expressive enough as time will allow ( one scene where he does get into some expression is ironic since his eyes are opened wide ala Clockwork Orange to test for the government what he can see ) . Other possibilities from the original text are left out in lieu of decisions in the script and the direction that do , however , carry along many unintentionally entertaining aspect ( or maybe intentional , who knows with the motley crew of writers they've assembled for the screenplay ) . Certain lines are hilarious in just how they can be uttered seriously in a movie ( i . e . Biel and Cage in bed , sleepily she says " Maybe there is such a thing as destiny " ) , or in little twists that Frank makes as he always is one step ahead of what will happen , like in the pick-up scene in the diner , or , more uproariously funny ( at least to me ) , when he splits up into multiple versions of the same character during the climactic cat & mouse game in the bowels of the boat ( yes , multiple versions , as we see him cheat every scenario that he could possibly enter ) . There's even something sudden and exciting about seeing situations , albeit not to be , where the hero fails and the girl dies in a big bang . But even the possibilities here of this being a follow-up in a sense to Cage's previous starring vehicle , Ghost Rider , in making this a guilty pleasure , get squashed because , frankly , Tamahori is satisfied with just staying square enough with little rip-off moments ( intro to Vegas via Ocean's Eleven ) , bland action ( surprising coming from Julianne Moore ) , and a somewhat tepid romance between Biel and Cage . The use of visual effects is also a little deterring . But to say that it's neither a very good movie or a very bad movie is besides the point . Next is an example of run-of-the-mill theatrics with more involving underlying elements , of questions raised about the responsibility of a person with clairvoyance to the public and those closest to him , and the more cheesy bits of braggadocio , not being paid more attention than the usual mainstream aims . A shame , though it might get a few minutes of viewing time by me when it pops up on cable . |
510,581 | 453,068 | 60,418 | 5 | undercooked and too short , but there are some exciting moments | A B-movie with maybe a slight notch of extra fatalism , Flight to Fury is Monte Hellman with a near-disposable piece of low-budget work that's somewhat made up for by some stirring action set-pieces and a chase that makes up the best part of the movie in the last ten minutes . Dewey Martin plays Joe , a man with a particular goal he's after , which is never really too specified despite some interesting , shady dealings early on ( according the site here it's gold ) . Jay ( Jack Nicholson ) gets involved almost through a very smooth-operating sociopath scheme , as he kills Joe's one night stand and somehow gets involved in the expedition . On the plane , with some other nefarious characters including a Japanese fellow ( Vic Diaz ) , the plane crashes , leaving a few dead and the rest on a trip to get help . But since they're in the Phillipenes , they get caught . Will they escape ? Hey , it's a B-movie after all . The premise isn't that great , but unfortunately Hellman doesn't get things truly in gear until the 2nd half ( the scenes on the plane are actually really dull , maybe the point but dull nonetheless ) . Once the stakes get raised and the characters get more and more on edge - and casualties and bullets fly - then the fun of Hellman's dread-in-B-movie-land gets going stronger . Luckily he has Nicholson as co-star , who even in a less demanding role here gives the goods , as aside from the ' Japanese ' guy on the crutches there isn't much in the way of even just decent acting ( with the possible exception of that sexual assault scene on Destiny in the hut by the captor ) . And much of the motives and the dialog , also provided by Nicholson , seem underdeveloped and not good enough for just a 73 minute running time . Then again , it's good that material like this doesn't over-stay its welcome . I also will probably want to check out just the last ten minutes some other time , as it makes for a very nifty chase scene , in the empty black & white photography , and has a few memorable shots of Nicholson holding a gun and his limp-shot arm . Not a total waste but nothing special , the kind of little movie that probably played a lot on midday TV back in the 70s . |
510,872 | 453,068 | 100,514 | 5 | more of a misstep from the writers & Sheen than Eastwood | I've watched the Rookie on TV recently , and I can see what's wrong with it up front . What took a little longer to see was why it could've been better , or maybe couldn't . To give credit where some minimal credit is due , Clint Eastwood as director - and even as star to a degree - is just doing what he does , and as business as usual with his style and presence it isn't bad at all . In fact , given that he's strapped to a chair for half the film at the whim of not only Raul Julia ( as a German ? ) but also Sonia Braga , I'd say that for die-hard Eastwood fans it should be worthwhile to watch at least once . The disappointment for me , thinking about it more , was Charlie Sheen who may have been miscast as the hot-headed , scarred and typical ' rookie ' David Ackerman . He comes in with the same attitude from Major League , where it worked , but it doesn't here . Despite the character , background and just in general , not being written quite right , there could've been a better actor , one with some more subtlety to compare against Eastwood's usual , cool swagger . Then again , in general , there is something of a very mixed bag about the screenplay by Boaz Yakin and Evil Dead 2 co-writer Scott Spiegel . On the one hand certain lines and a scene or two do click well enough with humor & / or the sort of usual police thriller scenes ( plus a good tongue-in-cheek kind of bar-fire outburst with Sheen ) . On the other hand , it's also got a lot of overwrought dialog delivered by character actors who should be given better . Even as an exploitation film at times the script doesn't suit its director . The Rookie is the kind of dumb Hollywood action show that I wanted to like more than I did , grimacing during the more uncomfortable scenes ( i . e . Braga and Eastwood's " number " on the chair ) , and seeing at best some solid genre mechanics going on . Overall , it's so-so . |
508,127 | 453,068 | 307,479 | 5 | ehhh . . . | There are many out there that will compare Steven Soderbergh's new film ( a remake ) , Solaris , as like Kubrick's 2001 , and in some respect it tries that in the few moments they show visuals outside of the ship and the pace of the slowness of that is keen on that count . But 2001 will always be the better picture because that was a true meditation on space , and it wasn't an excuse to use a " second chance " romance formula on a space station . This romance , which goes on between George Clooney and Natasha McElhone , starts off on Earth , and we see them trying to get close , but then things fall apart , and she ends up killing herself . Later , Clooney is called up to a station next to Solaris , where most of the crew is dead , and it doesn't take long for McElhone to re-appear in his eyes , though it may not be her at all . While Soderbergh practices an interestingly controlled style that's a bit better than expected , there is always a lack on interest in the characters and what they are feeling - even when Clooney , who tries to show levels of sorrow , turmoil , and occasional reason , is often sterile in this role ; much of the film lacks any lift and wonder , and 2001 at least had both for the intellectual and younger viewer . In the end the point is senseless , and shows that after Soderbergh's grand success with his masterpiece Traffic , he may be slowly going downhill ( this year he also had the low-budget Full Frontal ) . By the way , Jeremy Davies needs to take a couple of acting classes before he's given another part . |
508,636 | 453,068 | 312,843 | 5 | a brand of nihilism that can only be exported here to the states - not that it makes it much absorbing | If I had to say anything very pleasant - and yes I mean pleasant in regards to a film about teenagers ( mostly girls ) who start killing themselves in mass numbers and somehow linked to a pop group called Desert - it's that it has a knockout start to it . Actually , the first half is actually about as strong a cinematic pull as the bulk of Fight Club is , and both pictures probably share the common trait of the darkest kind of satire possible . The difference is , it's not necessarily as easy to laugh at what happens in Suicide Club as in Fight Club , and if any film were to take the cake in the unsettling-mindset department , the ball would be in Sion Sono's court , not David Fincher . But if there's one thing that Sono lacks as a writer / director that Fight Club ended up having in spades was a point , or at least a fully absorbing air about it from start to finish . As I said , it starts off in the sort of fashion that will make even the least squeamish have their hairs on the backs of their necks stand upright . We see what appears to be any regular day at the Japanese subway line . Private-school girls line up at the side waiting , presumably , for the train . They all start to hold hands - suddenly , a tension starts to build , and as we know from the title itself , this might be the group it refers to . And sure enough , we're given the full splatter of the impact made when they synchronize their jump . It's truly one of the scariest sequences in all modern Japanese films , or just contemporary films in general . Then we get into more of the thrust of the story , particularly the interest in the Detective Kuroda ( Ryo Ishibashi , whom I remember was not bad for most of what the script required him ) , as the investigation unfolds . But it all seems moot , as more suicides occur , and there's always those pesky little musical interludes either on TV or just randomly interspersed into the framework of the picture . When it finally hits much more personally for Kuroda , and the emotional stakes get raised higher , then the filmmakers suddenly lose their focus - big time . Suicide Club has a lot of potential , and if it were ever on TV again I'd try and check out scenes that still resonate so long after first having seen the picture . It's not an easy film - even if you end up loving it - and it puts up some questions about what the media's responsibility might be in these matters of cause & effect ( or , in the old Marshall MacLoughan saying , ' the media is the message ' ) . But most of the fascinating points and deliriously violent bits get hammered down in the bog that is the rest of the picture . I remember just feeling like the film trailed off after a while , with something it still tried to latch onto in coherence but left to nothing except to try and make more of a ' logical ' explanation , of someone who was possibly behind the subliminal parts in the messages in the songs . I'm sure if you're Japanese or are more familiar with the pop-culture scene the group Desert ( whether or not they are real is anyone's guess , which is a partial credit to Sion Sono ) it's a little funnier or more in context , but if not , as was the case for me , it starts to wear thin after a while . Not that I don't think there isn't room for what's ' really ' behind the suicides , but in comparison with the much stronger statements and visual strokes being done elsewhere , it's paler in comparison . There is forceful film-making here , and something to be said about the derangement and hopelessness in the hearts of men and especially women . But what does it all add up to ? Depending on some , it might not add up to anything , and Suicide Club is then just a dire exercise in a kind of pornographic nihilism , or it adds up to one of the most powerful kinds of horror movies made about what you'd least expect and the consequences and after-effects of such a disturbing element like mass suicides . I still don't know whether I like it more or less , I just know my reaction wasn't terribly favorable . That being said , I was glad I saw it , warts and all . |
510,296 | 453,068 | 69,768 | 5 | and finally " Ape Killed Ape ! " | Battle for the Planet of the Apes is a disappointment for what the director doesn't accomplish that he already had so well in his previous installment ( the dark veneer is gone , as are any relevant comparisons to the present with any level of satire ) , and it's the kind of cheese that a little kid will wrap in tiny balls and hurl at the screen whenever it comes upon him to do so . This time it's war ! Caesar butts heads with Aldo , a war-monger gorilla with a thick skull and a less than one-sided personality who is reminiscent of the Michael Biehn character in Planet Terror : Give em the guns ! Give em ALL the guns ! And so , war is waged between the straggling humans and the now powerful apes and gorillas . Will there be a voice of reason ? The plot doesn't have much cohesion except to make it clear that this one will tie up whatever loose ends there needs to be with the first part , just in case anyone really wants to take notice ( of course , there are some more than thousands of years in gap space between five and one , but who's counting ) . In the most crucial scenes in the picture , where the battle is waged harshest and Aldo has to answer for a horrible atrocity , Thompson only films it adequately enough so that it doesn't ring badly on TV . There are some ambitions in the script , even to include the original " Lawgiver " , played by none other than the great John Huston . But it's not for much trouble ; there's even a lapse of judgment in seeming to put in lots of footage from the PAST films for some reason , which must be attributed to laziness on the writers and editors . Probably on par , if not maybe a smidgen above , the 2001 remake of POTA , ' Battle ' doesn't end with a bang , but with a bunch of bangs that amount to the emotional wallop of a whimper . |
510,214 | 453,068 | 78,504 | 5 | Sidney Lumet directed this ? uh-huh . . | I have memories of this film , mainly because - a little strange to admit it on such a forum as this - I was once the lion in not a full-on production of the Wiz but in a segment in a musical revival thing as a kid with a couple of scenes from the show dropped in . So in sort of ' preparation ' , I watched the film a few times . I saw it again on TV recently and I tried to connect what I thought of it the first times around some ten or so years ago . I may have had a little admiration for it in spots , but I also wondered why it didn't totally work either even back when I was a less discriminating of flawed movies . The sense of large-scale production design and escapism is still there when I see it , and a couple of the songs are lively , but now having gone through many of director Sidney Lumet's other films as a director , all I can think now is ' why Lumet , why ? ' Because it's to me something uncharacteristic of him considering his better films ( the Pawnbroker , Serpico , Dog Day Afternoon , 12 Angry Men ) which are all gritty dramas . It's a change of pace , to be sure , and it's not necessarily a horrendous mistake . But to say that it isn't necessarily ' good ' isn't off the mark either I'm afraid . It's basically an African-American interpretation - if not outright remake - of the Wizard of Oz , where Dorothy and Toto get taken away from their urban living into a fantasy-version of it . Michael Jackson , Nipsey Russell , and Ted Ross play the usual companions of Scarecrow , Tinman and Lion , and each gets their own song to display their inner flaws and insecurities ( " You can't win " from Jackson , as cheesy as it is , actually isn't that bad ) as they head off to meet , of course , the Wiz ( Richard Pryor ) . But along the way there's the wicked witch Evilene , with her minions now on motorcycles . So all of this does have potential . That it all isn't realized is maybe not so much the fault of any one complete part of the production , even if it has overall definitely dated . A good few of the songs , particularly the couple when Dorothy and company arrive in the Emerald city ( " Color it Gold " as I remember it called ) , are lavish , huge production numbers , but also tinted with that 70's disco tinge that is more than a little irksome . There are also attempts at humor that don't really add up either , though as a kid I laughed a little more than I did today . Is it worth seeking out then , giving as something for the whole family to see ? I'm not sure I could really say . I still have memories of having fun doing the ' Ease on Down the Road ' number back , and seeing it for some played out like this might be more entertaining than for me . Diana Ross isn't terrible here , but I would probably get more enjoyment out of seeing her sing with the Supremes than being stuck in such a typical character who has to sometimes emote to the point of overkill ( when the evil witch has the heroes in a certain predicament you might see what I mean ) . It's cheesy and big and ambitious , and Lumet probably had good and lofty intentions . But it just doesn't hold up altogether , at least for me . |
509,220 | 453,068 | 364,955 | 5 | a film where satire and drama don't mix well | Terry Zwigoff and Daniel Clowes , director and writer of Art School Confidential ( second meeting after Ghost World ) , have here a perplexing convergence of sensibilities . It's a film that I really wanted to like more than I ended up doing so . It has a premise that is not bad at all . A suburban kid constantly picked on as a kid ( and virgin ) goes to an odd-ball ( and usual kind of ) art school , where he meets people who are , admittedly by the film itself , walking clichés . And for the first half hour , give or take , I thought the satire ( and , more importantly in this case , laughs ) that Zwigoff and Clowes were aiming for went off splendidly . There are some funny vignettes showing the young Jerome ( Max Minghella , whom I'll get to next paragraph ) trying to adjust to this new world , where he has troubles finding the right girl , and in general to his fellow drawing classmates as they mouth off as the pretentious being brilliance . BUT , then the storyline takes a bit of a detour , and it along with the characters never fully recover . The problem I see reminded me of why another film that targeted a specific group in-wind of an institution-kind of setting , so to speak , like Election , worked well and this didn't . Not to compare too much as they're different films , while Election could work in balancing out some of the more dramatic aspects with the satire , Art School Confidential just couldn't . As the filmmakers get more into the love story portion of the film , then into the serial killer storyline ( involving characters with secrets soon revealed ) , one realizes that a ) what little satire is left is overwhelmed by the dourness that accompanies the darker side of Jerome's descent into art-school hell , and b ) its star Minghella just can't pull it off totally . As an actor he often has a look on his face and in his eyes that's very much the same scene to scene , close to being on the verge of weeping outright ( yes , even more than Jake Gyllenhall in his earlier years ) . Overall his work isn't awful , but there's more needed for this rather simplistic character - when it comes down to it ( and , admittedly , clichéd but not an interesting kind ) - and is outranked by other superior actors like Malkovich and Broadbent . Maybe some might find more wit in the film's later half than I did , but even the ending that tries to put one more satirical point in the works , seems like its been in other films before . And there are a couple of points logistically in the story that just don't work ( i . e . certain particulars that one once SOBER could see put on the paintings ) . Despite a few bright spots early on , and some cutting wit and clever jabs at the ponderousness of how art school's work ( with some of the best material from Ethan Suplee's sub-plot as a struggling filmmaker ) , it's a disappointment coming from this writer / director duo . For all the possibilities that could be open with such material , only a few are realized . |
508,515 | 453,068 | 117,509 | 5 | it's not a terrible movie , it's just . . . . . huh ? | I remember seeing Romeo + Juliet in a high school English class . . . or at least I'd like to pretend I did . If anything , I probably remember reading the actual play more , or maybe when they tried to do the comparison with Zeferelli's far superior 1968 version . Bored one day ( very bored , though sadly not with the wherewithal to pick up a book like a more sane person ) , I saw Romeo + Juliet was on cable and stayed tuned to watch it . It's not as bad I've heard from some , which is that it's one of the worst films ever made . It's somehow weirdly watchable in some instances and shots and moments . Baz Lurhmann isn't a hack , that much is completely certain , he's got too much verve and POP in his style to be easily ignored . This is in fact what made Moulin Rouge , for better or worse , the significant achievement it was . But all the technical razzle dazzle in this case can't cover up the biggest problem of all : casting . And I don't mean that in the sense of " oh , casting these hot young people of the 90s like Di Caprio and Claire Danes and , uh , John Leguizamo I guess " , that notion is a given . Watching the film today , after years of knowing Romeo & Juliet and Shakespeare work in general , the actors with one or two exceptions can't pull off the performances . Lurhmann leaves these kids and other character players like Harold Pirenneau and even a strange walk-on like Paul Sorvino to fend for themselves . And as for the two stars , Di Caprio and Danes , they are pretty to look at , but the performances clearly don't have a kind of focus that's required with the material . Perhaps this is more than anything not so much a fault of the director's in that " oh , I'll cast them for this look and that " , but of simple things like rehearsal . I can imagine Lurhmann taking so much time to prepare how to make Verona the Verona-on-speed of his world , the Capulets and Montagues in their power games and battles , all super-designed and made out in super 90s sheek with some 80s leftover . So in short , there is a vision here , but its squandered when the human elements are left beside . Some bits are worthwhile , like Pete Posthlethwaie ( sic ) s the priest , but really the main attraction is to try and lure in mall kids who wouldn't go near the Bard with a ten foot pair of designer jeans under normal circumstances . It's shiny and goes fast and crazy , but there's not a lot of substance much . . . at all . That being said , it's fun to re-live some of the 90s music , as cheesy as it can get . |
510,171 | 453,068 | 486,576 | 5 | not deep much at all , and it's happy that way - ' safe ' doesn't necessarily mean terrible this time around | Rise of the Silver Surfer is like a three-part cartoon version put back into live-action on Saturday morning for kids . If I was a kid , I think I might have responded more , if only because I knew there could be some cool toys to get . It's a shallow diversion of an entertainment spectacle , but as far as others out there go - notably the prior installment in the F4 series - it could go a lot worse . This time the stories focused on three points : stopping the total annihilation of the world from Galactus - a super-duper space being that comes on like the biggest hurricane , as a big lumbering marvel of visual fx ; the problems of being close together between Reed Richards and Sue Storm , and the rift ego and the good of the group causes among the four ; and the Silver Surfer , and his connection invariably to the previous villain Victor Von Doom . None of this , unlike a Spider-Man or Batman movie , is very psychologically complex or rounded in a kind of perpetually existential comic-book way . But this time it's not exactly dull in seeing how our main heroes interact ( even Johnny Storm isn't entirely annoying this time , as there's a little development about his obviously narcissistic edge ) , and how the media buzz around them encroaches right behind the Surfer and Doom . There's even a very funny bachelor party scene - not too explicit for PG of course - including a drunk joke with the Thing and some guy with an afro . If there are fun enough moments , it doesn't mean the flaws are there , even for one ( like myself ) who's never read a Silver Surfer comic . Doug Jones , who plays the Surfer , provides about a tenth of the skill and imagination he brought to his roles in Pan's Labyrinth , but it goes without saying that he's not given a really impressive villain to play . Hardcore fans be damned , this is a very simplistic creation , for the film anyway , where he goes about on his surfboard in T-1000 form ( minus the knives ) . It's also a distraction to hear Surfer's few words spoken by Laurence Fishburne , who provides nothing except a deep-sounding vocal to a practically expressionless radioactive force . Doom , on the other hand , just provides a kind of extension of his egomania from the first film , only this time compounded by a devilish plan that makes no sense ( ' hey , let me ride on this board to mess around with F4 while the world will soon come to an end , that's smart ' ) . It doesn't help matters that Tim Story , more often than not , is still coasting along as director , offering little by way of visual prowess or much understanding of what rises comic book adaptations to possible great art . But all this aside , I'm kind of not disappointed with Rise of the Silver Surfer on the whole . Notwithstanding another movie in the franchise that probably won't get any better , it's a reckless fun-house that keeps buoyant spirits and may have the fans of the original comics more pleased than with the first outing . At the least , there's an uproarious moment during a Chinese wedding , and maybe one of Stan Lee's best cameos to date ( " It's Stan Lee ! " ) . |
508,151 | 453,068 | 249,380 | 5 | just because it is not totally boring does not mean it's any " good " | Baise-moi is a movie you might find while rummaging around in your buddy or girlfriend's box of super-secret things . Not even so much a porn closet or drawer , just a place where things that are too horrible and perverse and maybe just personal are stored away from prying eyes . Certainly it's hard to picture many people putting this in their DVD collections right between say Bad News Bears and Batman . But it could be at least considered a " real " film , not entirely a porno ( though there's enough to classify it such and it has been in some countries ) , which helps to criticize it as something other than just trash or boring masturbatory material . To be fair to the filmmakers ( one a feminist and one a porn star , sounds like a joke but it isn't ) , it should be treated as a serious movie that would only be masturbatory to the sickest fs this side of the bowery . That doesn't really mean it's any good though , or enlightening much on the human condition or , you know , giving a good story . If there is any story it's all knock-off , like Thelma and Louise re-written by Frank Miller on a lesser day and filmed by a kid who's just got a digital camera and has watched far too many no-budget exploitation movies . It's simply about two women ( both also porn stars , which helps to explain why they go for such explicit sex scenes without question ) , Madine and Manu , who meet one day when one forced the other by gun point to drive her to the ocean , then the two decide to join together to do . . . whatever , drive , f , kill , repeat , rinse maybe , reload , quibble , f and kill in bigger-numbered capacities . There's is not a very pleasant trip , nor is it entertaining , but it's hard to say if it's really " boring " in the way that exploitation movies can be when they are at their worst . If nothing else , it's not I Spit on Your Grave , which most of us can be thankful for . It's also shot with some kind of ugly near-yellow tint giving everything a sickened jaundiced look , and acted by porn actresses who barely know two modes to act : Manu is giddy in the most sadistic way or just not giving a damn about what happens to her ( rape early on ) or how many people she kills ( which is a lot , nearing Natural Born Killer numbers by the end I take it ) , while Nadine is more withdrawn , quiet , an occasional smirk but with less of a real drive to be on this pointless trip except as something to do or be . As it stands Baise-moi today doesn't contain that same shoot-you-in-the-face factor of controversy , but it's also of little philosophical or moral justification either . It's a weak statement done up with plenty of pizazz and punk , it's just gruesome enough for the unapologetic intentions it has . Baise-moi settles to be more than its contemporary women - getting - revenge - on - the - run flicks , but it doesn't settle to push any boundaries for those outside of hardcore pulp audiences . It has its reasons to exist , and I never turned it off , and yet what's the point of telling someone else to watch it ? I haven't the slightest , except as a super-flawed semi-interestingentry in killing spree X-rated adventures . |
509,294 | 453,068 | 109,813 | 5 | I guess it's fair | I saw this film again on TV one night , and while it looks entertaining for kids , adults will want to reckon back to the days of the TV show ( or maybe just the Honeymooners ) . The actors are somewhat credible here , with Rick Moranis always getting some laughs as Barney , but hey , that might be it here . Not great , but it is a whole lot better than the sequel at least . |
510,177 | 453,068 | 395,584 | 5 | I got pretty much what I expected - slightly improved film-making from Zombie's first film , but . . . | . . . that goes without saying that it isn't by a lot . In a way , Rob Zombie's second film , ' The Devil's Rejects ' , affected me the same way his music does - it's usually self-indulgent , stylized like it's nobody's business , and at times its fairly entertaining stuff , but you know while you're listening to it there's better material in the genre . His first film , ' House of 1000 Corpses ' , was below average for my tastes , as he reveled in the fact that he was a writer / director of a horror film by making a Oliver Stone-esquire pastiche of the genre . This time around , he goes for a more conventional narrative , though saying that one must take into account that its in the framework of a raw , un-hinged , demented , exploitation crime film . So , there are some good points about it , if muddled under by the flaws . As with ' Corpses ' , the film is style over substance , or story - the characters from the last film , the ' Fireflies ' ( led by Sid Haig , in a cheerfully disturbing performance ) , are on the lam from Texas troopers , most particularly the vengeful Sheriff ( played by William Forsythe , overplayed for good and bad results ) who'll stop at nothing to see they pay for their crimes . On the way to hideout among friends ( one of which Ken Foree , one of several obvious nods Zombie makes to past exploitation / horror films with cameos and small parts ) , they continue the carnage . While watching the film though , one isn't as concerned with any real story as much as just the atmosphere , the fiends and victims who populate this late 1970's hillbilly environment Zombie has sprung up . The good parts are these - Zombie shows himself to be fairly adept at writing scathingly ( and I mean scathingly like a iron to the face ) witty dialog at times , mostly tongue-in-cheek , and has moments of inspired wild-ness in his style . He also has the good knowledge to let his actors go as nuts as possible , which helps at times to heighten the mood . But this leads into the bad sides of the film , one which some won't be bothered by ( mostly die-hards I'd figure to exploitation flicks of the 70's ) and some may be even more repulsed by than me : the Fireflys are , by Zombie's manipulation , by default the most sympathetic characters of the movie ( when compared to the ' evil ' police that is , and the innocuous victims ) . The problem is , despite some attempts to make them charming by some stretch , to get a viewer on the side of the anti-heroes , he doesn't succeed on this level . During parts of the film , including the ending scene ( I won't reveal it , but to give an idea of the scene it's done with Skynyrd's ' Free Bird ' blaring out ) , I started to think about another filmmaker who's gone in the realm of the take-no-prisoners , on the side of the outlaws film-making , Quentin Tarantino . He's not a filmmaker immune to criticism , but in the sort of side-world he's created with From Dusk till Dawn and the Kill Bill films ( connected by some similar characters ) the anti-heroes have a kind of balance with their more sadistic and ' bad ' side to get a viewer rooting for them almost . Zombie is so in love with his style of film-making and these people he's created , that he doesn't realize that these aren't very charming people at all ( bullies and children almost all the way through ) , and as the film heads towards a climax , it's hard to really root for anyone . Maybe that's the point , as a satire , but I just didn't get it , and by the big finale on a road in Texas , the whole experience of the film felt a little , well , average when in regards to the other ' shock ' films Zombie pays tribute to . In short , the excesses that Zombie went with in ' Corpses ' have sort of lingered on in ' Rejects ' , and while there are some curious and ' cool ' bits scattered about ( along with a very good classic / souther-rock soundtrack ) , it becomes a little boring at times too . I'm sure after this film that Zombie may make more movies , better ones perhaps , but with ' Rejects ' he has made an uncompromising , violent , torrid , amusing , and ludicrous work here that does everything to call attention to itself . . . akin to his solo music work . It's the kind of film I can recommend more to some than others . |
508,627 | 453,068 | 205,271 | 5 | Not Altman's best hour , but at times not what you might expect | While Robert Altman's film Dr . T and the Women , which has the usual lot of the ensemble , the overlapping dialog , and differential and emotional relationships beneath the surface has it's moments , it's all over the map even for me . Richard Gere gives a compassionate performance with what he can work with at least , redeeming himself from some of his lessor work ( i . e . Runaway Bride , other films ) . Certain scenes are rather remarkable - particularly not just the ' breakdown ' from Farrah Fawcett in the mall but her whole performance and appeal in the film - while others just aren't . It's like a cluttered bad of tricks and femininity that may appeal more to others , or not at all . Laughs come in small doses from observations from the gynecologists world , but overall , it's a tad bleak , and overall not as successful as Altman's better times in his ' one long movie ' of his long career . |
508,508 | 453,068 | 1,179,891 | 5 | Grindhouse trash that should be trashier , but it'll do in 3 | Word of advice : don't go to see My Bloody Valentine in a regular theater . Or even on DVD unless if it's just with a bunch of friends with some beer . It may be ironic of me , but even at just 2 stars I would recommend seeing My Bloody Valentine the remake as it is advertised : in 3D . The filmmakers know that this is trash from the get-go , and they decide the best way to pump it up with horror movie steroids is to make people put on the glasses and create an onslaught of senseless and tasteless killing scenes that try to find new ways to kill people with axes . On this level the picture is respectable as trash , but in a way they almost don't go far enough : on a scale of 1 to 10 this movie is a 7 , even with the 3D . What this needed to be was the most god-awful piece of crap ever , with horrible dialog and violence that could offend the most liberal mother out there . Instead it's . . . another slasher movie with some splashy special effects . This also means please , for the love of Pete , do not go into this expecting anything in way of story or characters . The whole gist of the story is this : " WHO " is the miner killer stalking people on Valentine's Day 10 years after his supposed death / disappearance ? Is it this gentlemen who has come back to town since leaving 10 years ago ? hmm . . . I wouldn't hope that would spoil anything , but who's to say I did ? Maybe for some who haven't been too exposed to many horror or slasher movies this mystery may act tricky and keep them guessing . For everyone else , it's just plain ol ' stupid and leading up to an ending that is second only to Saw III as being most idiotic " Flashback-Explains-Everything " kind of resolution . But then again , why would anyone watch this for things like performances ( though , oddly enough , not all of them are completely terrible , which adds to the frustration of the script being true " blah " ) ? It's an excuse to just throw up newly refined killings and some cheesy dialog and random appearances and JUMP surprises , and from a remake of a horror movie from the 80s that has a spotty record with fans anyway , and on those terms it's not quite as bad as you might expect . Or , perhaps , it is as bad as you'd expect , but it was hard for me not to laugh incredibly through the whole 3D experience . It's great fun as a near guilty pleasure ride , and what it looks to be in every other aspect . |
509,635 | 453,068 | 90,859 | 5 | No . . . you're history | Looking at Cobra is like peeking in to a time capsule dug underground and unearthed for all to look at in awe . Not because it's a particular ' good ' movie , but because of its time and place and its level of completely tasteless action and " plot " . Cobra stars Stallone as Cabretti aka " Cobra " , a killer robot masquerading as an Italian-stallion detective who wears his sunglasses like they come as part of the GI Joe action set . He's after a killer , or killers as he has to continually point out to his pathetically clichéd higher-ups , and has to protect a woman , model Ingrid ( Brigitte Nielson as decent eye-candy and less than so-so actress ) from being targeted by the killer squad . The tag-line seems to suggest that Cobra might be wiping out criminal elements as they appear in reality in 1986-era L . A . The crime wave was something fierce at the time , going as far as to influence comic books like Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns . But Cobra functions so much as a comic book it would keep Frank Miller gasping for the oxygen tank : Cobra is after a ridiculously armed and well-stocked group of assassins who we see stand in formation in dungeons or basements or whatever clanging their axes like they're trying to emulate the army art from Pink Floyd's the Wall . You would wonder why something sensible would happen against a band of crazy killers who seem to kill at random until they focus on this ONE WOMAN , like say if the FBI would get involved . . . but no , it's only Cobra , he's the cure , they're disease , yada-yada . So much of this is so implausible it counter-acts what could be some good ol ' mindless dumb action fun . It's TOO mindless , and at times too boring ( those 80s montages are so wretched as to edit on the beats of the forgettable 80s synth-pop ) to even really care . If it isn't dull then it's just so . . . huh ? There is a car chase , for example , where one sees Cobra chasing after ( or being chased by ) the killer squad , and seeing his car once or twice do one of those jumps and crashes that would normally kill any car is one thing - but when it reaches the eighth or ninth time it's just too much . Add to that Stallone's non-acting , his incredulous one-liners , and you got yourself some dated stuff . And yet , it isn't exactly a failure or a totally bad movie . The opening sequence at the supermarket is exciting and violent in that degree that keeps tension building for at least a little while . And the director - hack George P . Cosmatos - does direct some of the absurd violence in the climax at the factory with some panache and thrills . But it's hard to stack up against what doesn't work in the film . Cobra is what other cop movies - not least of which Stallone's own co-vehicle Tango & Cash and Demolition Man - parodided , and it shows . |
508,895 | 453,068 | 52,077 | 5 | Edward D . Wood Jr . ' s masterpiece , er . . . | What is called by many film buffs as the worst motion picture in the history of Cinema is indeed cheesy , lame , ill-concieved , and yet irrisistable . It's the type of filmmaking that probably gave George Romero incentive to go the next and better step with Night of the Living Dead , and I mean that in good ways and bad ways . Truth be told , this is one of the most influential movies ever with its unintentional laughs at the bizarre , the bad acting , and bad sets , bad , I can go on and on . But make no mistake , this is a bad movie classic , if you could call it , in the old 50's sci-fi genre . And in closing , if you want just a tid bit of an idea of what to expect from Plan 9 from Outer Space , I'll say this - Bela Lugosi is in one scene in the beginning of the picture ( the laugh out loud exit from the house when he holds the flower ) and then for the rest of the movie he is substituted ( he died minutes after filming the scene ) by another , taller actor in a cape covering his face ! Exceptionally terrible . ( it averages out from my perspective ) |
509,604 | 453,068 | 335,345 | 5 | For the audience , this is one of the most subjective films made in recent history . . . | . . . and I suppose on that level Mel Gibson's " hottest " movie since Braveheart and the Lethal Weapon days , is a success . Rarely has an audience been so polarized , so backed into a corner by the media's controversy , and by the reactions from audiences around the world ( or rather in America , in other countries the film didn't have as huge an impact , at least box-office wise ) . Some of the best movies bring forth people to discuss them , to debate them , to conjure thought . While The Passion of the Christ does that , its controversies don't end up as one of the best movies of the year for me , far from it . It's like if Pier Paolo Pasolini ( director of Salo , a film that beats this film to the rank of the most disturbing over-the-top " statement " movie ever ) had been given Hollywood money , sat through a few dozen Italian horror films for inspiration beforehand , and decided to re-make his The Gospel According to St . Matthew ( without the ' talky ' points ) . Or , maybe not . Maybe it's just Gibson spewing out everything in his twisted head about what he thinks on Jesus . But one thing it's not is authentic , at least emotionally . Those reading this review and others on this site know what the film's about - like The Passion of Joan of Arc ( one of my favorites and infinitely more compelling and tragic on a tortured soul , despite no money and no sound and minimal violence ) , Gibson takes the last hours of an infamous figure's life , and condenses it into a film . Whatever glimpses we get of Jesus ' teachings and life before his betrayal and torture and death are snipped in as though Gibson wanted Tarantino's story structure from Reservoir Dogs . And like Tarantino , though on another playing field with even more melodrama , at least of the film is devoted to showing Jesus as something of a superhero , able to withstand tumultuous whippings , scourges , crown-o-thorns , and his arduous trip through town to the hilltop without once going unconscious or ( gasp ) killed before the big show . Other images pop up here and there , such as the always weeping Mary Magdalene and Mother Mary , the weird Devil children and lady Satan , and the attitudes ( though , unlike Joan of Arc , no close-ups ) of the angry Jewish priests . As I said , to watch this film for objectivity is not so much as for subjectivity . In the film-making department , Gibson does implement some good things - with Francesco Frigeri and Carlo Gervasis ' set and production design , as well as Caleb Deschanel's cinematography ; the film at times is sweeping in its scope and detail . But on the other hand ( as with the treatment of the Jesus character ) the tone of the film is mostly one note , and loaded with a banging melodrama that keeps the tone of the picture on a track that will get boring for those who aren't with the mood of the film every step of the way . John Debney's music is also as melodramatic as it is chinsy . Then there is Jesus himself , the way he is presented , taken out , and so on , and this where the subjectivity comes in . The problem is , as much as it sounds like it might be fascinating to try , I can't change my beliefs around a film , and no one film will change my mind on how I view a particular religious character ( s ) . Not even The Last Temptation of Christ , a film that made Jesus at least more than a one-sided caricature , could persuade me to go on that route . I'm not saying the film forces a person to accept Jesus as savior and the one and only messiah ( though it's not totally un-true that it will mark higher importance if you're ' deep ' into Christianity ) , but it doesn't give a person much room to question the logic behind the approach to it all . Aside from all the excessive violence and brutality , which I could take and I know others could not , it is thematically a difficult film , and it doesn't leave room for compromise . On one hand the idea behind the story is daring , and on the other hand the execution of it is , in a sense , preaching to the choir . It doesn't help much to the fact that Jim Caviezel , while authentic in the look , is almost catatonic in much of his performance when he's not spouting off at the trial or moaning in his tortured state . At best , Gibson's vision of the final day and night of one of the most infamous figures in recent ( if you look at the history of the world , two thousand years isn't too long of a time ) history , is unique . I doubt anyone else in Hollywood would have the conviction to go through with it . But at worst , it's only of worth to those who are already down with the Lord Jesus Christ , and is the closest thing this year to being a snuff film . If you saw it in the theater or decide to rent it now on rental you'll know what that means . Like a carefully planned and structured train wreck , this is one artist's interpretation that didn't enlighten or inspire or make me think about what it was like to be Jesus ( ' Temptation ' did that ) , but it will for some , and is not entirely forgettable . |
510,577 | 453,068 | 425,430 | 5 | leaves me not really offended , though never impresses either , it's just a mediocre horror movie | I don't think that I would completely write off the Pang brothers , Oxide and Danny , as they don't completely go into the self-indulgent post-modernism that has panged , no pun intended , the horror filmmakers of late . Only once or twice did I see that they might jump into ' Saw ' territory . But even having not seen the majority of the Japanese horror movies that have give rise to the over-abundance of ' ghosts-in-my-house ' wave ( and , likewise , to their American counterparts ) , there isn't too much with surprise or shocks in The Messengers . I'm sure they're self-conscious of the films they're paying homage / ripping off ( the one scene involving the crows and their rendezvous with John Corbett's character is like a chummier mash of The Birds and North by Northwest ; Shining and Close Encounters references seem a little more than clear to me too ) , yet they also succumb to having their film be really affect-less . It's never too stupid though ; I didn't have a disliking toward any one character , with the exception being maybe towards the end with Corbett ( I don't think I'm spoiling much there ) , and it's the sort of typical family - moves - into - a - creepy - house story that decides to hit the usual bases without going rapidly wrong on the marks . But there's also the muddle that comes in dealing with the supernatural side of things , amid the average scares of ' what did I hear in the other room , I'll go check ' . For one thing , the variations on who the ghosts and demons in the house are - if they're the family that used to live there , or if they might be the whatevers that killed off the family striking back at the new family in the house . There's fair acting from the family ( Kristen Stewart of Panic Room fills in the teenage-girl niche , and there's competent work from McDermott and Miller ; Colbert is a little creepy , but I guess that's the point ; William B . Davis's bit part is the best real surprise of the movie ) , but it's all at the mercy of a standard script that might've been better , damn if I say it , as a half hour TV episode or something . Only sometimes , too , are there some potential unintentional laughs to be had , mostly towards the climax and with the very randomly placed crows that can only come in a pretty inexplicable flick such as this . In the end , the Messengers is nothing new , and won't contribute much at all to the horror genre at large , but I wouldn't throw it in my ' I hate this movie so much ' bin either , as it only continues to that non-threatening realm of the kinda-creepy PG-13 haunted house picture . |
510,471 | 453,068 | 55,946 | 5 | Arch Hall Sr's crowning achievement ! wait , it's his only movie as a director ! | Although it's tempting to give weird dog of a motion picture , by proxy of Mystery Science Theater 3000 , which may or may not be the only available version right now , it goes all the way to being a classic . They make this very random precursor to Encino Man , with hints of quality that might've inspired Hal Warren , work much better than it would without . WATCH OUT FOR SNAKES ! It's the suspenseful story of a young man and young woman ( well , young man depending on point of view , as Hall Jr himself plays the lead character Tom Nelson , with his wacky pompadour and scrunched face ) who go out to a desert valley , but as Tom sings a song ( with random singing voices playing in the background ) , poor Roxy is taken away to the cave of a caveman where , oddly enough , her father is also waiting . The caveman - dubbed Eegah for his bouts of grunts equaling that word - shows off his wares , which are just corpses all lined up , and as he starts to get more and more attracted to Roxy Tom finally goes on the lookout to find her . WATCH OUT FOR SNAKES ! Meanwhile , she shaves Eegah , she and her father escape , and Eegah goes in pursuit in random long takes where Eegah pursues as the car won't work driving in his direction ! Even more odd than this , somehow after how many hundreds of thousands of years of Eegah's existence , he finds his way to the small town Tom and Roxy are in , and wreaks havoc on everyone in town ( well , not everyone , there's not enough balance for that ) . Not sure if this will give you an idea of what the movie's about , as there isn't much ' about ' it , except that it's young kids who sing , go ' wee ' in a car , and have to have existential tidings with a caveman , including a shaving of his fake beard , and some possible controversy in the town when they return . It's very lame - WATCH OUT FOR SNAKES ! - and doesn't always make much sense , which is good that the MSTK3000 commentary comes in . It turns what it otherwise the purest form of an ultra low-budget not-quite B-movie lark into a really hilarious trip . They keep repeating the phrase that appears seemingly out of nowhere despite it being credited to a line from Hall Sr , " WATCH OUT FOR SNAKES " , this despite the fact that there is only ONE shot of snakes ; we see more footage of lizards having sex and gila monsters crawling around then we do snakes , which adds to incredibly to it being sort of unintentional comic genius ala God complex . You may even want to join in with friends to say it at random times . So , get ready to see some graceful club-waving , lavishly dated pop guitar playing and singing by Hall Jr and Henry Prince ( that pool scene is absolutely golden ) , and jump-cuts that give Godard a run for his innovator money . WATCH OUT FOR SNAKES ! |
508,899 | 453,068 | 95,652 | 6 | Could've been better , could've been a lot worse | George Romero , with his films and choosing of certain projects , is at least dependably unpredictable . The genres he works in 99 % of the time are in the horror genre , or some bird of it ( be it with zombies in his ' Dead ' films , or more psychological with Martin and the Dark Half ) . Here he brings us the tale of a once prime athlete confined to a wheelchair , and the plucky little monkey who is trained to help him around the house and act as his companion as well as hands and feet . But , of course , things don't turn out right with what this ' experiment ' comes forth . It's like one of those stories you find in those cheap paperback books at the grocery store , only stripped down to bare essentials and given some adrenaline from its filmmaker . This is a peculiar film to see , which offers brilliance as well as dullness and just plain oddness . Some things about the story make less sense than others as well ( as will happen when science becomes important to the story as opposed to more of a MacGuffin ) . The lead actor , Jason Beghe , is good in the role , but isn't nearly as convincing in being the after effect of the ' medicine ' he's given ( as does the Monkey ) as he is in being the earnest , nice side of the character . There is even one great supporting performance in cold , hard-pressed form from Christine Forrest ( wife and bit player in the films of Romero ) . It's not meant to be taken very seriously , to be sure , but Romero on the one hand has a kind of sweet ( in the ironic sense ) , interesting story with just the monkey and her master , as the injections start to take its toll on the both of them . On the other hand , he still has to work in this framework of building up more and more terror with a kind of one-foot death-machine or something . It's worth a look , especially for just the craft of the film , but it's definitely not one of Romero's best . |
510,914 | 453,068 | 462,477 | 6 | of a good and powerfully understated effort - until it gets into the personal | Timothy Spall , one of Britains best currently working character actors ( he can be seen in films varied between Harry Potter and the Sheltering Sky ) , is probably one of the only outstanding reasons to see Pierrepoint : The Last Hangman , and probably not until it likely will air on PBS some weekday night . It's not a poorly made film , for the most part ( with the exception of one dream scene set in a field with a scarecrow , which is a revolting taste of schlock surrealism , it's got believable production values ) , but it's mainly in the script that it falters the most . We're given as juicy a subject as one could hope for - capital punishment in Britain in the late 40s and early 50s , with Pierrepoint ( Spall ) as the best in the not-quite profitable business . After getting some acclaim from superiors and sent to hang 47 Nazi war criminals in a week , he gets even more acclaim from his friends at eh pub and on the street via the press . He doesn't want it , however , as he tries his hardest to keep his personal life out of his cold , detached mode at work , which is in the frame of the best of professional ' men ' at work , with everything kept securely inside . A lot of this does make for subtly compelling drama , particularly with the execution scenes , and the the little moments in-between with Pierrepoint and his assistant , or in how he keeps it out of the life he has with his wife . It's when the writers push ahead with the most deliberate and obvious point of the movie , about making the professional personal ( which I understand and could work for the sake of the film ) , is made into something that switches gears radically from the rest of the film . The whole tie between Pierrepoint and his best singing buddy at the pub feels as if it was put in to drive it further home about how he loses his faith in his abilities to do his horrifically successful job , and seems to lack logic to boot ( wasn't there a trial after all ? ) . The whole aspect of Ruth Ellis is also put in almost as an after-thought , with the scene following her execution driving home the idea that if this were a documentary instead , it would be twice as compelling given all of the fact and trouble with the English justice system of the period . But as it is , for a could-be-TV-movie , it does have some very good strengths to it . Along with Spall , the other actors pull in equally subdued and careful work , even from his friend ( whom , oddly enough , Pierrepoint doesn't find out his full name until before it's " go " time ) , and skillfully weaves restraint in with chilling scenes of hangings - and how measurements are made in the most methodical of approaches - into an average result . |
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