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train_19915 | What do you call a horror story without horror and story? This is the most irritating thing about the film: I get the feeling the writers never really decided what's actually going on in the film! It's a different thing to know it, give hints for the audience and not completely reveal it, but here, you get the feeling the screenwriters don't know it, characters in the film do not know it and audience sees that no one knows! (Remember "Cube"? Even that film knew more about itself.) I've consumed a lot of 80's horror / gore films and this movie certainly has its roots deep in those films. But a lot of important things are missing. We really know nothing about the characters. They keep repeating empty lines over and over again. The story isn't really developing - it never goes anywhere. B-acting is OK in this type of horror films, but there's not much to act in the script. We don't care about the characters. There's nothing to remember about them. There's not even cheesy humor or unnecessary sex. And most importantly - no thrills, no chills.You only get some commonly used elements of the horror film genre. They show the Lordi monsters one by one but their characters don't really contribute anything for the story.I honestly believe that this amount of story, character development and atmosphere could be achieved with minimal amount of crew and equipment. Oh yeah, film makers used to do that - and more - some 20 years ago! I felt the shared embarrassment of the audience as the film ended. Too bad really. | 0 |
train_22833 | What was an exciting and fairly original series by Fox has degraded down to meandering tripe. During the first season, Dark Angel was on my weekly "must see" list, and not just because of Jessica Alba.Unfortunately, the powers-that-be over at Fox decided that they needed to "fine-tune" the plotline. Within 3 episodes of the season opener, they had totally lost me as a viewer (not even to see Jessica Alba!). I found the new characters that were added in the second season to be too ridiculous and amateurish. The new plotlines were stretching the continuity and credibility of the show too thin. On one of the second season episodes, they even had Max sleeping and dreaming - where the first season stated she biologically couldn't sleep.The moral of the story (the one that Hollywood never gets): If it works, don't screw with it!azjazz | 0 |
train_4218 | I haven't really seen too many of the Columbo films... actually, I think I've only watched one or two, apart from this one. I've always liked Columbo, though, somehow without even having seen that much of him. Peter Falk is and has always been the perfect choice for the character, because of his looks, his voice and his charm. The perfect proof of this is that though the series started all the way back in 1968, the latest(and probably not last) of the films was made in 2003. That's 35 years. And Falk was 40 back when he made the first one. The series consists of 68 films(unless my count is off), all of which are made for TV. Everyone knows the character, even though no one has ever seen a film featuring him in the cinema. That is quite an accomplishment, if you ask me. The plot is pretty good. The only problem I have with it is that the killer and murder is revealed at the very beginning(though that may be the same for all of the Columbo films), leaving no mystery but how Columbo solves it, making it somewhat dull(since there's not much to look forward to at the end of the film). The pacing is good, there's hardly a scene where you're bored. The acting is very good, particularly that of Falk and Ruth Gordon. They have some great exchanges of dialog in the film. The characters are well-written and credible. The dialog and script is unusually good for a TV-movie. All in all, the film is, yes, surprisingly good for a TV-movie, and definitely worth watching for any fan of Columbo and/or crime/mystery flicks. 8/10 | 1 |
train_20974 | The opening scenes move as fluidly as frozen velveeta. The attempt at dramatic dialogue only makes me wish I had better control of the fast forward control. Vampires are usually portrayed as sexy and intelligent or mangy disgusting creatures. This vampire tries to seduce his prey by imitating a lost puppy. I usually tally a body count, so there was a cat (which doesn't count) a bum, a girl who fell out of the sky with a sword in her (whatever that was about) and then the plot. Foley artists are respected for using celery to create the sound of a broken arm, but using the sound of biting into an apple for a vampire biting a victim is just plain silly. I liked Warlock, but this movie just stunk so bad that we turned it off, and it was so forgettable we rented it a year later only to turn it off again. | 0 |
train_24982 | Deathstalker is directed by John Watson and it stars Rick Hill, who is some kind of body builder and famous of that, if I have understood right? The plot follows as Deathstalker (Hill) tries to get something back from the evil lord, and he has to travel to the lord's cave. He meets many dwarfs and monsters during his journey, and the settings are very close to Tolkien, and of course Conan the Barbarian. This is a rip off of huge success of Conan, and even though this is very stupid film, it has many nice trash merits and is recommended for trash fans and tolerating film junkies!There are no many cinematic merits in this film. Couple of scenes are almost atmospheric and fascinating, but what Deathstalker concentrates to show, are nude females and huge muscles of Hill. Females are usually helpless victims and very stupid, too, so this is very macho film and thus may not please many feminists! The fight scenes are nothing special and pretty dull, and the monsters are not either anything special. And all the other aspects of the film are also very amateurish and badly done, but what did you expect from low budget effort like this? This tries to be as great as Conan but fails pretty miserably. As I said, this can please fans of turkey cinema but no one else. This belongs to the category it's so bad it's great!Deathstalker is still not as near as bad as it could be, and as a turkey film, I appreciate this almost as much as other turkeys, enjoyable ones of course! If bad films are your cup of tea, then try this and have fun, but if you don't understand "enjoyably bad films" then stay away. And if somebody can't stand large amount of nudity, then stay away as well. There is more nudity here than violence, and due to these scenes, the film has an R rating. Otherwise this could be some safe PG family film!4/10 | 0 |
train_7482 | "Vanilla Sky" was a wonderfully thought out movie. Or rather, "Abre Los Ojos" was well thought out. I watched that movie late one night, excited about what was to come. I wasn't disappointed. By the end of the movie, I was awstruck. I couldn't get it off my mind. The whole idea of it just blew me away. The ending, was more of a surprise than Shyamalan could ever do. The plot line was also something that kept me interesting through and through. The cast, superb. It was an all around wonderful movie. The kind of movie you can watch again and again and always find something new. I've seen it four or five times and I'm always finding something new. It's a movie to keep you interested forever. | 1 |
train_15625 | Boris Karloff is Matthias Morteval, a dying, lonely old nut who lives in Morhenge Mansion with some servants and tells his doctor friend, "Don't try to doctor me, doctor! I'm disgustingly healthy!" He invites his nieces and nephews to his home and warns them they may have inherited a genetic disease that causes madness by "shrinking the brain" (?)***SPOILERS***Morteval/Karloff ends up dying, and murderous "toys" (designed by his dead brother) start killing off the relatives. A mini cannon fires real bullets into a guys face, a life-sized knight in armor attacks with an axe and a dancing Sheik stabs people with a knife. One guy getting strangled makes some hilarious faces. At the end, Julissa and her boyfriend find Karloff is still alive and hiding out in the dungeon where steel gates seal off the room. He plays the recurring organ theme music (sort of a death rattle used for the killings), the brother's spirit starts talking ("The whole house will go with me!") and the mansion goes up in flames.This senseless mess is too dark, boring and the stupid dialogue never matches the lips. | 0 |
train_4142 | FATTY DRIVES THE BUS is simply the funniest, most original and entertaining piece of work i have ever had the pleasure of seeing.this movie is by no means up to Hollywood standards, or even that of a straight-to-video movie fluff comedy starring terry "hulk" hogan, in terms of camera work, editing, acting, budget, or anything else.what this movie DOES have though, is a very original and enjoyable story, and it is obviously done by people who love making it, and the enthusiasm of the all the cast and crew really break through all its budget and acting downfalls.this movie proves that you don't need a huge budget or decent actors to make a great film, all you need are some original ideas and some passion for what your doing.simply the best movie ever. i don't care how you get it, rent it, order it, steal it, download it, just see this movie.now i just hope they make a DVD version. | 1 |
train_17587 | Yes, he is! ...No, not because of Pintilie likes to undress his actors and show publicly their privies. Pintilie IS THE naked "emperor" - so to speak...It's big time for someone to state the truth. This impostor is a voyeur, a brat locked in an old man's body. His abundance of nude scenes have no artistic legitimacy whatsoever. It is 100% visual perversion: he gets his kicks by making the actors strip in the buff and look at their willies. And if he does this in front of the audience, he might eve get a hard-on! Did you know that, on the set of "Niki Ardelean", he used to embarrass poor Coca Bloss, by telling her: "Oh, Coca, how I wanna f*** you!"? She is a great lady, very decent and sensitive, and she became unspeakably ashamed - to his petty satisfaction! And, as a worrying alarm signal about the degree of vulgarity and lack of education in Romanian audiences, so many people are still so foolish to declare these visual obscenities "works of art"! Will anyone have ever the decency to expose the truth of it all? | 0 |
train_8018 | In this Muppet movie, Kermit, Miss Piggy, Fozzie, Gonzo, Rowlf, Scooter, Camillia, Dr. Teeth, Floyd, Animal, Janice, and Zoot are college graduates who decide to bring their successful college musical, Manhattan Melodies, to Broadway. Unfortunately, no producer will even meet with the Muppets. After being denied by too many producers, Scooter suggests that the Muppets decide to move on on their own. However, Kermit still believes that he can get his show on Broadway, but after he finally does and let's everybody know that he sold the show, Kermit get's amnesia and the others don't know where he is.This features many great scenes, including a live action sequence that introduced the Muppet Babies, a wedding sequence filled with Muppets, including the Sesame Street cast and Traveling Matt (from Fraggle Rock), Scooter as a movie theatre usher, and a scene where Rizzo and the other rats cook breakfast.My only complaint is that more characters weren't included more. Sure, many of them appear at the wedding, but there should have been some significant roles for Bunsen, Beaker, Beauregard, and Sweetums, and Lips should have been part of The Electric Mayhem in this movie like he was in The Muppet Show's last season and The Great Muppet Caper, and Miss Piggys dog Foo Foo should have been with her as well (after all, Rizzo The Rat, also performed by Steve Whitmire, had a big part in this movie, and he wasn't very well-known at the time). | 1 |
train_8580 | The only thing serious about this movie is the humor. Well worth the rental price. I'll bet you watch it twice. It's obvious that Sutherland enjoyed his role. | 1 |
train_1839 | An excellent movie about two cops loving the same woman. One of the cop (Périer) killed her, but all the evidences seems to incriminate the other (Montand). The unlucky Montand doesnt know who is the other lover that could have killed her, and Périer doesnt know either that Montand had an affair with the girl. Montand must absolutely find the killer...and what a great ending! Highly recommended. | 1 |
train_12089 | Film dominated by raven-haired Barbara Steele, it was seen when I was seven or eight and created permanent images of pallid vampiric men and women stalking a castle, seeking blood. Steele is an icon of horror films and an otherworldly beauty, and the views of the walking dead pre-date Romero's NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD shamblers, unifying them in my mind.I don't see the connection between this film and THE HAUNTING, which is clever but ambiguous about the forces present. LA DANZA MACABRE is a b-movie without pretention, daring you to fall in love with Barbara Steele and suffer the consequences. There's no such draw to HAUNTING's overwrought Claire Bloom. The comparisons to the HAUNTING are superficial.And no, this movie does NOT need to be remade. Not only is it a product of the Sixties, but the large percentage of talentless cretins in Hollywood cannot fathom MACABRE's formula for terror. That formula is based on one overriding factor: GOOD WRITING. Low-grade classics like CASTLE and Corman's Poe films with R. Matheson and Tourneur's OUT OF THE PAST share a commonality of strong writing. It's simple. Get a real writer like Richard Matheson or Steve McQuarrie and let them put a plot into today's cinematic mess. Besides that, let Hollywood attempt some original material for a change, and stop exploiting the obviously superior product of the past. | 1 |
train_16149 | This is a fair little show about the paranormal although it feels as if Art Bell and his ilk figured out how to carve a career out of the attitude that Carl Kolchak exemplified. Of course there probably wouldn't be an X-Files if this show hadn't prepped this audience for it so well. Darren McGavin is not exactly the super-heroic type but he is a plausible(enough) guy to deliver heroic deeds. Check out his work on some of those old Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Here he is the main attraction, there doesn't seem to be a girlfriend or wife who's a distraction. In fact there isn't a whole lot of sex appeal to the show. Something I'm noticing as well is that the pacing isn't really suspenseful in a typical way. There's a lot of throwaway humor to this show. Sometimes its just pokey to get to the climax. There's a thread from this show coming all the way up to the present MAD MEN show in terms of style. Not that David Chase writes Mad Men but the people that worked under him on The Sopranos definitely have emulated and inherited his serio-comic tone. | 0 |
train_10734 | WOW! This film is the best living testament, I think, of what happened on 9-11-01 in NYC, compared to anything shown by the major media outlets.Those outlets can only show you what happened on the outside. This film shows you what happened on the INSIDE. It begins with a focus on a rookie New York fireman, waiting for weeks for the first big fire that he will be called to fight. The subject matter turns abruptly with the ONLY EXISTING FOOTAGE OF THE FIRST PLANE TO HIT THE TOWERS. You are then given a front-row seat as firefighters rush to the scene, into the lobby of Tower One. In the minutes that precede the crash of the second plane, and Tower Two's subsequent fall, you see firemen reacting to the unsettling sound of people landing above the lobby. It is a sight you will not soon forget.Heart-rending, tear-jerking, and very compelling from the first minute to the last, "9/11" deserves to go down in history as one of the best documentary films ever made.We must never forget. | 1 |
train_23928 | OH MY GOD.. THE WORST SH*T I'VE EVER SEEN -this is the main thought which came into my mind right after watching the movie. And I really do not understand anybody with opposite myth. Though, maybe the idea was good but the effect miserable. I especially mean the role of H. Graham. What was that??? In my opinion it has destroyed all positive intentions of producers. The character was played in affected and annoying way. Every time she appears it reminds that you' re watching a movie and is destroying a spirit of the moment, then whole movie because the most time what you can see there are her stupid faces with more stupid attempts to create the emotion. TERRIBLE, don't waste your time. | 0 |
train_8269 | I've been intrigued by this film for a while, in part because of the extremely high score here on IMDb -- a 9.0 average with over 300 votes gives it the highest rating of any accessible silent film! How had I not heard of this film before this website? Well, you can't always trust the ratings. This is actually a very good film, preserved quite well if the fine VHS transfer I rented is any indication -- excellent acting by the principals, especially William Haines as Brown, and good location work at Cambridge with some fine action footage in the climactic Harvard/Yale football game -- but the story must have seemed a hoary chestnut even in 1926. Obnoxious, self-centered and charismatic guy goes to school and gets put in his place, becoming in the process a caring, self-sacrificing friend; I doubt people in 1926 found much that was really exciting in the last few reels, the predictability factor is high. Still, it starts out very well, and is certainly deserving of being remembered, if not praised to the heavens. Maybe the previous 350 voters are mostly Harvard men...EDIT Now 600+ voters and the score has actually climbed to 9.2! Seriously, folks, there is ballot-stuffing going on here - I defy anybody to explain why this is a better film than "Metropolis" or "The General"! | 1 |
train_5509 | I'm going to review the 2 films as a whole because I feel that is how it should be considered, and watched. When I talk about 'the film' I am talking about parts 1 & 2 together when watched one after the other, as they should be.Thank you Jon Anderson, Steven Soderbergh & Benicio Del Toro.This film is a refreshing, bold, gritty and true film. And, it hearkens a new style of film making. No Faux drama. No Swelling sound track. Not Faux Documentary style. Just clean shots and an attempt to stick to the facts. I have been reading Jon Anderson's "Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life" and recently finished Fidel's Auto biography, and this had helped my ability to soak this film in properly. But I have to say that it is Jon Anderson's exhaustive, penultimate and wonderful biography that has given this film the proper historical back bone. Anderson was consultant on this film (or these 2 films). What makes this film a true thing is that it is clean. No swelling music or slow-motion photography to heighten drama, and even more importantly; no fake documentary shaky camera. Just square shots and straight forward shooting style. The type of camera used makes you feel right there in the jungle. Benicio Del Toro should be given full honors for this, I never doubted him as Che throughout the film... not once. He did a wonderful job and I will respect him for ever for this. Some people complain that the film only deals with 2 slices of his life and not the whole. But I think this is one of the true beautiful aspects of this film: it doesn't try to be everything. It doesn't try to 'tell the story'. A person's life is too multifaceted to try and tell in 2, 4, 8, 16 or 32 hours. This is one of the subtle beauties of this film, it resists that temptation, and stays focused on the intent of letting us GET A FEEL FOR CHE, HIS DEVELOPING MILITARISTIC MIND AND THE FORCES AROUND HIM. It focuses on 3 slices of time: The Battle to over throw Batista, Che's U.N. speech and the Gorilla preparations in Bolivia. "Motorcycle Diaries" already told his young man side, and I applaud S. Soderbergh for focusing on other aspects instead. I keep referring to Jon Anderson's book and the film stays true. The only weak link for me are the casting (not the performance) of Matt Damon. In a film so loaded with true to life performances, an American, (Matt Damon) playing a Bolivian is a clunky stretch - he does well, but after so much care in the casting, this was an over-site. Small and completely forgiven. The reality that the rest of the casting gives you, and most notably Benicio Del Toro's amazing job, put's this film at the top of my list.The fact that this film went almost straight to video say's something about how the cold war ethics that would never allow the 'revolutionized Cuba' to become what it might have, are still at work keeping it's story quiet. If not out of clandestine muffling, then out of the effects of properly done propaganda that has prejudiced this topic.This is a must see film, and Jon Anderson's "Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life" is a must read if you want to start to get a grasp of the early effects on the global mind set regarding the expansion of international / political financial chess moves of the 40's, 50's & 60's that placed unfair pressure on our South American neighbors, and the effects it fostered. | 1 |
train_20981 | The acting was horrible and they got both of the sports wrongggg.......not only did they get the figure skating rules wrong, but also they rules of GIRLS Ice Hockey. In GIRLS ice hockey you cannot check. You also don't BLOCK for someone. Not all they girls are disgusting gross mean and big. I play hockey and I'm only 4'11 and have been asked to go to schools like the one in the movie. Also not all hockey players hate figure skaters. A lot of current girls hockey players were once figure skaters themselves. Also we skate A LOT faster then the ones in the movie. I was embarrassed by the movie it gave people the idea that we suck.......although i must mention that it is difficult to transition between the sports because of the toe pick on the figure skates.....also some of those twirly moves KAtelin was doing on the ice you couldn't do in a regular hockey game. She basically tripped the person, which is illigal. Its also unrealistic that she would get a HOCKEY scholarship when she figure skates. That really made me angry that scholarship would normally be used to someone who could benefit the team. | 0 |
train_20291 | I've seen the original non-dubbed German version and I was surprised how bad this movie actually is. Thinking I had seen my share of bad movies like Ghoulies 2, Rabid Grannies, Zombie Lake and such, nothing could've prepared me for this! It really was a pain to sit through this flick, as there's no plot, no good acting and even the special effects aren't convincing, especially the so-called zombies, wearing nothing more than white make-up and their old clothes, so their good set wouldn't be ruined by ketchup and marmalade stains. If you really want to waste 90 minutes of your life, then watch it, for all the others, don't do it, because you WILL regret it! | 0 |
train_6450 | This is absolutely one of the best movies I've ever seen. It takes me on a a roller-coaster of emotions. I laugh and cry and get disgusted and happy and in love! All this in a little over two hours of time! The actors are all brilliant! I have to mention the leading actor of course, Michael Nyquist. He does a remarkable job!! I also admire the actor who plays Tore, who plays this mentally-challenged young man in such a convincing way! He sort of reminded me of Leonardo di Caprios roll in Gilbert Grape! And then there is the most beautiful song in the world: Gabriella's sång.I recommend this for everyone to see and enjoy! | 1 |
train_14772 | I'm not a regular viewer of Springer's, but I do watch his show in glimpses and I think the show is a fine guilty pleasure and a good way to kill some time. So naturally, I'm going to watch this movie expecting to see "Jerry Springer Uncensored." First of all, Jerry appears in approximately twenty minutes of the film's running time. The other hour and twenty minutes is spent building up this pseudo-farce about trailer-trash, jealousy, incest and deception. Jaime Pressley (who looks hot as HELLLL) is a trailer-trash slut who sleeps with her stepfather (a very unusual-looking, chain-smoking, drunken Michael Dudikoff who finally strays from his action hero persona). The mom finds out about the affair, they get into a fight, they want to take it to the "Jerry" show (that's right, no Springer). And then we have a parallel story with an African-American couple. They take it to the "Jerry" show. The characters collide. Blah, blah, freakin' blah! Trash has rarely been this BORRRINGG!!!! I was wondering why the hell Springer has millions of fans, yet none of them checked out his movie. Well, now it's TOTALLY obvious!! Whether you love him or hate him, you will hate this movie! How can I explain? It's a total mess of a motion picture (if that's what you call it). It's so badly edited, with scenes that just don't connect, and after a period of time the plot virtually disappears and it's simply all over the map! Just imagine a predictable soap opera transformed into a comic farce. With seldom laughs. My only positive note is a hot girl-girl scene. That's as risque as it gets. Don't get me wrong, the scene's pretty risque, but if you look at the overall film comparing it to the material on Springer's program--this disastrous farce seems extremely sanitized.My score: 3 (out of 10) | 0 |
train_14090 | HAH! So this is the movie that the "Next Action Stars" were getting into. Well I'm glad that I didn't participate and didn't win...Isn't it funny how one can just look at the first 10 seconds(!) and make up ones mind about a movie? I mean, come on! Just look at those titles!? I watched this movie(or part of this "teleplay" since it was produced for TV and we couldn't bear to watch the whole thing) one evening while doing my military service and the audience with me was the typical hodge-podge of average guys that once in a while watch series like Las Vegas just for the girls in the show. so the bar wasn't really high, the most watched movie in my group was Girl Next Door (and it wasn't because of the great script ;D . But this movie's total lack of originality, acting, scripting, and just about everything else that makes a movie good made it pretty easy to switch channel to Las Vegas (or was it CSI? don't remember...) without any complaints by the rest of the group. And that is rare(!) For heavens sake! Don't by this movie! If it's on TV, then yes, watch it. And contemplate on it. My conclusion? well, since Joel Silver has indeed produced some of the best action-films out there (Die Hard, Matrix 1, to name some) I can only say that producers don't give the film it's quality, they provide money for the directors. And to sell this movie just because it's a Joel Silver movie is just a desperate attempt to conceal the obvious flaws of the crew who really made it. | 0 |
train_6741 | The title sequence shows the credits written on a rain-soaked sidewalk as people trod on it; music is provided by someone whistling Alfred Newman's "Street Scene." Then we meet Det. Sgt. Mark Dixon (Dana Andrews), who always wanted to be something his old man wasn't: a guy on the right side of the law. But he's pretty vicious for a good guy. After several complaints over his roughing people up, his boss, Insp. Nicholas Foley (Robert F. Simon), demotes him. Foley tells him he's a good man, but needs to get his head on straight and be more like Det. Lt. Thomas (Karl Malden), who has just gotten a promotion.Meanwhile, Tommy Scalise (Gary Merrill, in a splendidly slimy performance) has an illegal dice game going and is looking to make a sucker out of the rich Ted Morrison (Harry Von Zell), who was brought in by Ken Paine (Craig Stevens) and his beautiful wife Morgan (Gene Tierney). She figures out too late her husband is using her as a decoy, and Paine strikes her when she refuses to play along. The chivalrous Morrison intervenes but Paine knocks him out cold. That seems to be the worst of it, but later it turns out the guy is dead; and Paine looks guilty.But this won't be Paine's story. Soon Dixon has fallen in love with Morganbut not before losing his temper again and committing a terrible deed that he tries to cover up. Morgan's father, a tale-spinning taxi driver (Tom Tully), may take the rap for it. It's up to Dixon to try to pin the blame on Scalise.Otto Preminger directs a script credited to Ben Hecht and three others from the novel "Night Cry" by William L. Stuart. This is a solid film noir with excellent performances and all the shadowy photography and murky morality we expect from this genre. It holds up until the brightly lit ending, which looks like something the studio had filmed to appease the censors. Of course, the classic noir directed by Preminger and starring Andrews and Tierney is "Laura." You'll enjoy this, but you can't miss that. | 1 |
train_23487 | I greatly enjoyed Margaret Atwood's novel 'The Robber Bride', and I was thrilled to see there was a movie version. A woman frames a cop boyfriend for her own murder, and his buddy, an ex-cop journalist, tries to clear his name by checking up on the dead woman's crazy female friends. It's fortunate that the movie script fixes Ms. Atwood's clumsy plotting by focusing on the story of these two men, victims of scheming women...Heh. Okay, you got me. If these guys are mentioned in the book, and I'm pretty sure they're entirely made up for the movie, I'll eat the dust cover of my hardback copy. Apparently, the three main female characters of the novel aren't enough to carry the movie. Zenia's manipulations aren't interesting unless we see them happen to a man, and a man's life is screwed up. Roz, Charis, and Toni tell their stories -- to a man. Because it's not important if a man doesn't hear them.I liked the characters in the book. It hurts to see them pushed off to the side for a man's story. I normally do not look for feminist angles on media, and I tried to enjoy the movie as is. If I hadn't read the book, I might have enjoyed the movie a lot more. So if you like the cop and the ex-cop, and you want to read more about them, you're out of luck. Read the novel, if you want to enjoy luscious prose and characterization subtly layered through a plot. It's the same plot: the movie excavated it, ironed it, and sprinkled it with male angst. It's like Zenia's revenge on Margaret Atwood. | 0 |
train_17912 | Pyare Mohan can be safely included in the blacklist of one of the worst-ever films made by mankind. The film, one of the many handicapped-people flicks that arose after the phenomenal success of Black is makes a mockery of the handicapped fraternity. Vivek Oberoi and Fardeen Khan are mere caricatures of handicapped people. While Black portrayed the poignancy and emotions of a handicapped woman and gave us a glimpse of her world, Pyare Mohan shows two desperado-like monkeys who have no qualms about being handicapped and bash up half of the world to protect their love interests. Anu Malik's music is fair enough. Vivek Oberoi who made a promising start with Saathiya is sadly losing his balls quickly in Hindi cinema. Fardeen Khan was never an acceptable actor and deserves to be banned from the film industry. Amrita Rao and Esha Deol are just pretty damsels in distress having nightmarish times in Thialnd with no one to save them - except for the afore-mentioned desperados. Boman Irani, as the villainous Don Toni, is somewhat acceptable. Avoid the film if possible. | 0 |
train_23350 | This movie has a few things going for it right off the bat. Having Dani Filth as a lead actor is automatically going to make some people like this movie. Admittedly, I love Cradle of Filth and listened to the soundtrack to this movie long before I watched it. Dani Filth is a very recognizable character and makes for a great lead. The independent filming style of the movie is great for the creepy factor. There are some GORGEOUS actresses in this movie. For being low budget, the special effects weren't bad either. The ways that people died were very creative and nightmarish.Now on to the cons. There is VERY little talking throughout this whole movie, thus making for very little as far as character development. It's hard to fear for the lives of limp, static characters. When there was a little talking, the F bomb was abundant, popping up in random places. Yes, I understand people swear but it seems like a preteen boy scripted this and thought himself cool for including all the language. The storyline, what I could make out of it, was pretty good although many parts are left dangling and the lack of conversation leaves one often wondering what's happening.In the end, Cradle of Fear is like a porno for people who love sex and violence, but like a porno trying to pull of a storyline, it just doesn't work too well. Rent it though, if you're a morbid person looking to sate your blood and flesh appetite. | 0 |
train_20573 | If the writer/director is reading this (and I imagine you are since you should now be out of work) then I must tell you - I have seen some bad movies in my time but this one gets the distinction of having the worst premise I've ever heard.SPOILERS - Nothing happens! A total waste of time. I laughed out loud at the end. SIDE NOTE - (if the whole movie was her in a coma then does the scene where she sleeps with that guy mean someone raped her while she was knocked out?)Utter rubbish. | 0 |
train_16581 | This is not the worst film I have seen of Peter Greenaway but it is close. That dishonor goes to the even worse Pillow Book. This director's films of 3 I have seen I find them all to be miserable. Like The Cook...,whatever positive cinematic flourishes he displays, are totally unredeemed by the repugnancy of his material and overall presentation. | 0 |
train_17362 | this show is one of the worst shows of ALL TIME! absolutely no original jokes and they're always a year late. like in 2009 they will finally say something about Michael Vick's dogfights. all of the cast members are people who wanted to be on S.N.L but had to go to the lowest of the low, mad TV.its an hour of mad magazine jokes witch aren't funny to begin with, told by terrible John Stewart wanna bees. so if you have any problem tell me id love to hear the opinion of the 3 people who watch this show. family guy put it well "Osama bin Ladin was hiding in the one place no one would look, the cast of mad TV. There is a reason why no one watches the show. | 0 |
train_19354 | Dreadful acting. A thinly veiled attempt to slam those on the left side of the aisle.Women are subjugated and revolve around men. Tom Selleck shows his acting range from A to B. | 0 |
train_7 | Although I didn't like Stanley & Iris tremendously as a film, I did admire the acting. Jane Fonda and Robert De Niro are great in this movie. I haven't always been a fan of Fonda's work but here she is delicate and strong at the same time. De Niro has the ability to make every role he portrays into acting gold. He gives a great performance in this film and there is a great scene where he has to take his father to a home for elderly people because he can't care for him anymore that will break your heart. I wouldn't really recommend this film as a great cinematic entertainment, but I will say you won't see much bette acting anywhere. | 1 |
train_4822 | Having to have someone hold your hand whenever walk up or down stairs? Having others taste your food before you eat it? Facing an over-bearing mother? These are only a few of the obstacles which the young Victoria has to deal with in this film (there's also the various power struggles going on, as well as attempts on her life). Needless to say, it makes for very fascinating and informative viewing.I had only previously seen Emily Blunt in The Devil Wears Prada (and little else). As she was in that film, she is once again the standout here. I was extremely impressed with her portrayal of the young Victoria, and thought she handled the role very well. She makes the transition from the young Victoria we meet at the start of the film to the Queen Victoria she becomes later entirely believable. Blunt is perfectly cast in the role, showing all the different sides (from the vulnerable, to the strong, from the young Victoria who makes mistakes to the Queen who takes control). Not enough can be said about Emily Blunt in this role. She's - quite simply - exquisite, commanding your attention every second she's on screen. She keeps you transfixed up to and including the final shot of the film.Rupert Friend proves to also be well-cast as Victoria's love interest (and eventual husband), Prince Albert. The actors have nice chemistry and you absolutely believe in their developing relationship. They have their disagreements, but you can tell that they are in love. Blunt and Friend are excellent in every scene that they share and keep you interested in what is happening between Victoria and Albert. The other actors in the film are also very good. Paul Bettany as Lord Melbourne, Miranda Richardson as the Duchess of Kent, Mark Strong as Sir John Conroy and Jim Broadbent as King William. There is not a single bad performance in this film. The less-focused-upon people are well-portrayed also, given what little screen time they have. Even Victoria's dog (a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel named Dash) is memorable and makes an impact in the film.Although the movie does tend to skip more than a few aspects of Victoria's life - especially at the end - and instead *tells* us what happened (with her and Albert) on screen, what matters the most is what we actually *see*. This is, after all, a film about 'The Young Victoria' (not 'The Middle-Aged Victoria', nor 'The Old Victoria'). While there are some embellishments made on history with this film, it remains focused on what it sets out to do - which is tell us the story of how the young princess rose to power.The movie looks amazing, the costumes Emily Blunt wears are visually stunning and the music only adds to the film, never detracts from it. It's exceptionally shot and, unlike a lot of films these days, this movie is actually a good length, as it doesn't run on so long that you lose interest or feel that it's needlessly being drawn out.It goes without saying that what makes this film so great is Emily Blunt. She's in fine form here, turning in another excellent performance and elevating this film above what it might have been, had another actress been cast in this rather important/historic role. This is one finely-crafted film, with excellent performances that should definitely be seen. If you have an appreciation for a fascinating look at a woman who was extremely significant in history, this is a must-see. | 1 |
train_14506 | It would help to know why it took so long for a book as movie-ready' as "The House Next Door" to be adapted for film or television. The book was copyrighted in 1978. One reason could be problems designing 'the house'. The house in this Lifetime film is really so ugly that I can't imagine anyone buying it. In fact it's so ugly that someone would probably have come and destroyed it as soon as it was built.I'm not crazy about horror genre books, but this one was hard to put down when I came across it around ten years ago. The main characters are not the kind of people to look for anything occult in life, and this is one of the book's strengths. They are not people who would conclude that the architect was some type of demon..(or the devil personified) without witnessing and analyzing the events described so well in the book. However, it is a downbeat book for the most part, and I don't think that appeals to the people who run Lifetime. Maybe someone will come up with another version of the book in years to come. A better house..better music..a better screenplay and darker lighting...would certainly help. | 0 |
train_14352 | Whoever made this movie must have done it as a joke. I mean, this was the stupidest movie I think I have ever seen!! A killer snowman terrorizes a small town? Give me a break. Love it when he takes off driving the cop car. More like a comedy than a horror movie. If you want a laugh, rent this. If you truly want a horror movie, stay the hell away from this one!! | 0 |
train_20944 | This film uses all art-house clichés (slow pace, long static shots, minimal amount of dialog) to try to hide the fact that there really is nothing worth watching here: There is no plot to speak of, the characters are dreary (female lead) or cliché (Tersteeghe's character), and they do not ever talk to each other about anything that concerns their rather uneventful lives. The film is centered around a woman who finds out about her husbands adultery. Instead of confronting him, she half-heartedly takes revenge by committing adultery herself. After a fight and a reconciliation with her sister - who knew about the adultery without telling her - she asks her husband to stop cheating on her. They seem to be re-united as a family. Two other story lines - the planned move of the woman's elderly father with his young wife to Guernsey and the rivalry with the woman's sister - do not offer any interesting developments. The suicide of a colleague of the woman that seems to set off events in the film is not a subject in itself. For 2005 - or any other year for that matter - this is not enough to make an interesting film.Moreover, what little possibilities for dramatic development there are in the script are not used or are consciously avoided, as when both the woman and her sister mark a particular piece of furniture from their fathers house which is going to be sold because of his planned move. Both sisters want this particular piece and given their rivalry in the past - over much more important things than furniture: men - this could in theory lead to a confrontation. Or the matter could be resolved by one sister giving way to the other. Either way, this would not be a very interesting or original development of the story but at least it would constitute some development. The film clearly sets this situation up (with both sisters looking intently at each other during the marking and one sister having mentioned she does not want to draw straws) but it cheats us out of any resolution: the scene simply ends and how this - in itself rather dreary and materialistic - issue is solved, is not shown. Although almost completely absent, the dialog that is in the film is excruciatingly flat and tepid. For example, when during a visit to Guernsey, the 2 sisters address their rivalry it is in a three line dialog that has a childish "yes it is - no it isn't" ring to it. The fight and reconciliation scene with the 2 sisters is completely without dialog - giving a highly artificial, overly stylised and unrealistic impression and considerably reducing its impact. The way the woman finally - finally! - addresses her husbands adultery in a single line of dialog has to be seen to be believed - and is at the same time completely unbelievable. The husband does not seem to have any noticeable reaction or if he has any, it is not shown. The woman does not mention her own adultery to her husband. The scene showing the woman, husband and their young son asleep on an airliner, watched by the sister is possibly meant as a happy end, but the way the characters addressed the issues of their lives in what went before makes this unlikely.Because of its slow pace, uninteresting story, leaden direction and absurd lack of dialog, I found this film an example of everything that can be wrong with an art-house movie and a complete waste of time. | 0 |
train_21143 | A Blair Witch-War Movie that is as much of a letdown as Bwitch was! The title says it all, save your money and your time and spend it on a good movie such as "Once Upon a Time in America", "The Shawshank Redemption" or "Enemy at the Gates" (if you want to watch a GREAT "war" movie) etc.This movie, if it were a baseball team and the Major Leagues were the pinnacle and Single A was the rookies, then this movie was High school ball. It was filmed as if it were a High school drama club filming with their daddy's old camera. Sure they went into a hostile area (to make a film) but I don't call that brave, around here we call that plain stupid! This is a pass all the way! Now go watch it and then you tell me what you think. | 0 |
train_22704 | At first the movie seemed to be doing great, they had the characters profiles set...the plot seemed to be going in the right direction... however, as the movie progressed it seemed the director focused on the wrong kind of things...or just a lot was edited from the movie. The characters' identities changed for the worse within the movie. Also, there seemed to be a lot of implicit meaning -- in other words -- they had things within the movie that didn't seem to fit the movie itself. AND the title... no where in the movie does the title fit the movie...I suppose the title works for the previews.... Actors did well with what they had.....if they had a better director and writer, maybe this would have worked out better. But it didn't. So now there's a new terrible movie coming out this Friday.... My opinion!....don't waste your time or money. | 0 |
train_17226 | Yet another film about a tortured self-centered, arrogant, unfeeling hateful, self-destructive lead character we are supposed to care about.Don't get me wrong I am very open to all kinds of off the wall movies that have as the lead character a strongly self-destructive character. What I object to about this one is that there is so little background to this guy. Why did this guy hate himself and the world? Had the script dealt with this more they might have managed to elicit some sympathy for him. As it is he just comes off as an unpleasant hateful character, not tragic, just hateful.After taking great pains to make this guy as crazy and anti-social as possible and making his fate as dark as possible the writer then has the nerve to make a happy ending....This is not the worst film I have ever seen but it is in there putting up a good fight! Man! Don't waste your time. | 0 |
train_20385 | I believe in keeping religion out of government and out of the movies. When I want a sermon, I'll go to church, but I don't want one from a movie. I don't mind some supernatural themes, (after all, religion is about as supernatural as you can get!) but this movie had so much preaching in it that I was really annoyed. The landlady reminded me of witches that of seen in other movies. The bad guy even looked like he had horns. And what a silly ending: the hero went into the meeting and yelled at all of those old men, and that broke the spell. If only life were that simple. I think that when movies are that stupid, they ought to be distributed with a warning: DANGER! PREACHING CONTAINED HEREIN! | 0 |
train_11766 | This movie has everything you want from an action movie. Explosions,shootouts,bad guys and worse guys. It is fun to see James Belushi using his humor to get out of the trouble he has gotten himself in to since he stole 12 million dollars from the ultimate big boss "The Skipper. Does this sounds cheesy. Of course it is. But boy,did I have fun watching this movie. It is a whole lot better than all the direct to DVD garbage that is made nowadays. If you can get over the silly plot than you will find out that this movie has quite a few surprises in store. You could argue about the twists being predictable. But the fast pace of this movie doesn't give you time too think too much of them,which is a blessing since this movie is not about revealing the ultimate twist. But more about the journey to that moment. Only the title is a bit misleading and that could be the reason why so many people hated this movie. They probably expected a movie about mobsters in stead of some crooks double crossing each other. Pure fun! | 1 |
train_10725 | Space Camp is a pretty decent film. The plot is predictable, but the actors do a good job, and the special effects are decent for the time.This film was originally released about the time of the shuttle disaster, and that really put a hamper on how popular it was.The scene where the shuttle doors open in space is simply spectacular... on the big screen, that is... on a TV... it just looks average. I remember this scene in the theater. It made you feel like you were really up there.This would be a good film to see on IMAX, but I'm sure that will never happen. | 1 |
train_3830 | The first time my best friend and I sat down to watch this movie, we were watching it for Alex Winter of "Bill & Ted's" fame. We didn't know what to expect other than who and what it was about.By the time the movie was over, we knew that it was love at first sight. This movie, while not completely historically accurate, was and is the best one of its genre. I have seen other movies depicting the history of this famous summer and in my opinion, none of the others can compare. It fibbed a little at certain details, but those parts did not take away from the sheer elegance and romance of the story. I have seen the other movies about this summer and I find most of them to be good, but none as captivating as this one."Haunted Summer" has the qualities of a painting. The colors and settings seem to be something one would find on a canvas, framed and hung in a museum or on the walls of an eccentric's home. The costumes were gorgeous and, despite not being the most comfortable clothes in the world, made me want to find a seamstress to create such garb for myself. The whole movie was set on the picturesque Lake Geneva (where I hope to one day go because of seeing this movie) and the serenity that these historical figures found there.This movie shows, besides the tranquility found by all the escapees of England's harsh judgements, the strangeness that surrounded this adventure as well. Yes, there were drugs. It was a fairly common practice during that time, a time when drugs were not illegal. And the taking of laudanum (the liquid form of opium) was medicinal as well as recreational. Shelley suffered from consumption. Lord Byron suffered the pains of a clubbed foot. It was not surprising that there would be prescriptions of the strong drugs that were in their possession during that summer. And they were poets during a time when experience was the key. There was no time for prudish caution. Passion and experience were a big part of the Romantic Era. And out of the thoughts and discussions of science, religion and philosophy came the creation of a legend: "Frankenstein."Yes, in this movie, we see the beautiful and liberated Mary Godwin (not married to Shelley at that time) played by beautiful and talented Alice Krige. She is the control factor to all that goes on until she, too, gives in to experience. But she stands her ground and experiences things on her own terms. As was the strength that she inherited from her mother and father.The actors and actresses in this were perfect for the parts they played. The music fitting. The direction captured the essence of the summer, as I've read about it. This movie was based on a wonderful book "Haunted Summer" by Anne Edwards. If you like this movie, read the book. The author takes the story from what she was able to put together from the actual journals of Mary Godwin Shelley and the other participants of this story.If you are a person who loves history (even the little inaccuracies from time to time) and romance and the gothic, then this is a movie for you. It shows the birth of the birth of the monster, which even today teaches us about the morals of "playing God."A definite must see movie! | 1 |
train_11049 | If you're one of those who recognise with pleasure such arcane titles as 'Book of the Dead', 'Book of Eibon' or 'Necronomicon', then you should feel right at home with Malefique, a film which also features an occult tome, one with the power to change the destinies of all involved. Discovered by four French prisoners sharing a cell, the fearsome object has been placed in the wall there by Danvers, a serial killer incarcerated back in the 1920s; a man obsessed with rejuvenation and the black arts before he abruptly vanished. Finders of the book are Carrère (Gérald Laroche) a company embezzler shopped by his wife, Lassalle (Philippe Laudenbach) who aspires to be a woman but at the same time body-builds to execute an escape plan, the halfwit Pâquerette (Dimitri Rataud) who once ate his baby sister, and the 'librarian' Marcus (Clovis Cornillac), supposedly driven mad by reading, who murdered his wife. Reminding the viewer of Meat Loaf's equally bizarre, bosomy male in Fight Club (1999), Lassalle begins as the dominant member of the quartet, one who is especially protective of the infantile Pâquerette. With the coming of the book however, and the overarching need to decipher its dangerous contents, Marcus assumes greater and greater significance. At first assured of an early bail, meanwhile Carrère takes little more than academic interest in events. Suddenly he too needs an urgent escape option and, as the prisoners experiment, Danvers' book starts to reveal some of its terrifying powers...Staged for the most part within a prison cell, and between four or five characters, Malefique has a claustrophobic air entirely suited to its subject matter (as well as the limited budget of the filmmakers). Only at the start and then at the conclusion do we get to leave the confines of the cell, a necessary opening out which only serves to emphasise the doomed, closed-in nature of proceedings elsewhere. More than anything, this is a film about being trapped, either as a victim of your criminal past or of occult events now unfolding. "I'm going to escape," says Carrère at the start of the film, wishing more than anything to be able to rejoin his wife and son. Whether or not he does it will be at a terrible price, and the great irony of the film is that the ultimate form of an 'escape' may not be one a man might imagine.With all its budget limitations it is greatly to the first-time feature director Eric Vallette's credit that his film succeeds as well as it does. As critics have noticed, it is a film with strong Freudian overtones - Lassalle's distinctive mammaries and adult breast feeding for instance; the picture of a vagina which comes to life and develops an eye; the grown man who dissolves back into a foetus; Danvers' original placenta fetish; the dark cell as a primitive womb from which 'delivery' is awaited, etc. With so many interesting aspects to the script Vallette hardly puts a foot wrong, and he succeeds in creating a genuinely unsettling atmosphere out of what, when one comes down to it, is just a matter of four guys, four bunks, one folding table and a book. There's a genuine, growing, Lovecraftian frisson as the men summon up the unnameable darkness from within its pages, while one or two moments - the aforementioned blinking vagina, or what ultimately happens to Pâquerette - are unsettlingly memorable. The pacing of many of the dark events in Malefique is deliberate, rejecting the rapid cutting of many Hollywood productions: a video culture approach that often subverts the horrified gaze in favour of quick-fix action and gore. Perhaps this is a particularly European manner, as one recalls a similar, measured approach to shocking hallucination taken in such films as Verhoeven's The Fourth Man (1983) - a film that incidentally also shares a particularly nasty image based around a prolapsed eye.Lensed well in 1.85:1, Malefique benefits from excellent performances and, if for this viewer at least, the conclusion was not as explainable as it might have been, the journey to the final shot was worth taking. Coming so soon after the release of the similarly well-received Haute Tension (aka: Switchblade Romance, 2003), this is another reason to be grateful that good horror films are once again emerging from the French industry, this after a time when it seemed the only worthwhile product came from Asia | 1 |
train_17073 | I didn't know much about this movie before I watched it, but I heard it had something to do with quantum physics so I was interested. What I didn't know is that this is NOT ACTUALLY A STORY but a bunch of New-Age blowhards who love the sound of their own voice talking about how little they know about basic quantum mechanics. I say it belongs more in the Documentary category than Comedy or Drama.Marlee Matlin is in the movie, in order to give this New Age symposium *some* sort of a storyline. Her portions of the film feel horribly tacked on and are meant to display the speaker's thoughts so we won't die of boredom. Matlin has a real job as a photographer, unlike the New Age hippie that crashes on her couch. We get to listen to nameless people ramble on about what quantum physics all "means" to them. The one bright spot in this movie was the speaker from India (I assume), but I think he showed up for the wrong film.It looks like Barbara Eden really let herself go and she goes on and on about how quantum science has something to do with her crazy New Age beliefs. It looks like Quark from DS9 was running low on cash and he also makes a brief appearance in the film. There is a lot of whizbang CGI we're supposed to be impressed with; cells in the body are shown as dancing jello molds, because the filmmakers have apparently seen Flubber one too many times.People in the movie say that the Arawak people on San Salvador thought Columbus's ship the Pinta was invisible because natives had never seen clipper ships before, as if people today had any way possible way of knowing. Of course they leave out all of that information and just say "Columbus's ships were invisible to the Indians in America." The film takes many such arrogant leaps. Thomas Young did a double-slit experiment around 1805 and found that light can look like a particle some of the time, and a wave some of the time. Of course you'd never *know* this from watching this stupid film because the only reference to it is that "atoms can be particles and waves." And that must mean that people can pass through walls, walk on water, and never grow old if they just wish upon a star!! Then I'm sure Marlee Matlin could stop being deaf if she just *believed* hard enough. I'm being sarcastic, but this film is chock-full of false hope and beliefs that the people espousing them don't really hold.These are New Age kooks who have grabbed onto Quantum Theory as if it reaffirms everything they believe about meditation, zero point energy, crystal healing, etc. If these snake-oil salesmen truly believed the crap they were selling, couldn't they just *wish* their paychecks into existence instead of appearing in this joke of a film? We get to listen to another nameless man, with no credentials that we know of, talk on his couch in front of a fireplace (or TV screen) about how he creates his own life. Every time he was on the screen I wanted someone to rush in and throw a pie in his face. These people take themselves WAY too seriously. Some other balding guy in a suit says that nobody ever *really* touches anything because there's a magnetic force preventing it at the quantum level. If only someone had walked onto the screen and kept punching him in the stomach, screaming "I'm not touching you! I'm not touching you!" A moral relativist in the movie claims that there's really "no such thing as good or bad." So apparently it's OK that Hitler gassed millions of Jews to death? Another person says that there is "no such thing as love." It's just a chemical and that we really don't love people, we're just addicted to the chemical rush we have when we're around them. I suspect this guy is doing this film as community service for being addicted to heroin for so many years.We are witness to a truly pathetic sequence where two young adults walk around a wedding reception, seeing everything like RoboCop. They evaluate if women are cows, dogs, or foxes, and a sexual position pops onto the scree. Marlee Matlin gets drunk at the wedding she's supposed to photograph and the next day decides to love herself and take a bath because she's a beautiful and unique snowflake.I liked when the film said people often find evidence for their pre-conceived notions. Perhaps in this review I'm only seeing what I want to see, but I TRULY wanted to see these people get pies to the face, and it never happened.If you've never heard of any of the ideas presented in the film before, you may find them interesting, but there are better sources for all of the ideas here. If you want to watch a good movie that talks about the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, go see The Man Who Wasn't There. If you want to read a good book about Quantum Field Theory, read Hyperspace by Michio Kaku. If you want to see a film that talks about different philosophies with imaginative visuals, see Waking Life (although it can feel boring, self-important, and pretentious at times). All in all, you should go and read Quantum Psychology or Prometheus Rising by Robert Anton Wilson instead of wasting your time on this movie.I normally have a very hard time giving movies a score from 1 to 10, but this one was a very easy for me: 1/10 Stars.The movie's title is true. The people in this film don't know #$*! Hands down, the worst movie I've ever seen. | 0 |
train_10345 | The only other review of this movie as of this date really trashes the stars and the movie itself. I usually like to read the user comments to give me an idea of what to expect from a movie I don't know much about. It's unfortunate when there aren't many comments for a certain tile, because when there is only one review and it unreasonably trashes the movie and cast, you don't get an idea of what to expect. I read the review before watching this title and I don't know where all the venom for this movie and the stars came from. Douglas and Blondell were both very talented and attractive people who usually delivered, even when the material was not the greatest. I found the movie and the performances fun and enjoyable. It isn't one of the great all-time classics, but a pleasant and funny diversion-much more than you can hope for in most newer movies. If you are a fan of these stars, you will not be disappointed. | 1 |
train_17877 | The Choke starts as a rock band known as The Choke prepare for a gig at a nightclub called 'Club 905' owned & run by Guy Johnson (Andrew Parker). Lead singer Dylan (Sean Cook) & guitar player Mike (Jason McKee) plan to tell the other band members, bass player London (Brooke Bailey) & drummer Nancy (Tom Olson), that they are both going solo & their services won't be needed any longer. Once at the club Dylan prepares but Mike doesn't show up & the gig turns into a disaster. Then just as the band think things couldn't get any worse they find a dead body in the cellar, that all the doors have been locked so they can't get out & that they can't trust anyone as a mysterious killer begins picking them off one-by-one...Produced & directed by Juan A. Mas The Choke is a standard by-the-numbers teen slasher that really doesn't have anything going for it. The script by Jessica Dolan & Susannah Lowber (not too many horror films out there penned by ladies...) has some surprisingly good character's in it & some nifty dialogue but while it's much better than a lot of modern shot on a camcorder type horror in that respect it's so slow & boring that even a few interesting character's can't come anywhere close to saving it. As one would expect all the usual teen slasher clichés are used, from the isolated location the victims can't escape from, the cast of good looking teenagers who keep splitting up, a few murders & a really poor twist ending that tries to mimic something like Scream (1996) & be surprising but doesn't make a whole lot of sense when you think about it logically (they couldn't have done some of the things they were supposed to) & to make matters even worse I guessed who the killer was fairly early on & even though I don't want to boast I was spot on. Then there's the fact that the makers of The Choke felt that it's audience would be entertained by showing endless (well it feels endless while watching it) scenes of teenagers walking around dark corridors doing nothing in particular, I am sorry but there is only so many scenes like this that I can take before it starts to become tedious. The kill count is low, at first they all decide to stick together (good idea) but then they all just randomly decide to split up & go their separate ways (bad idea when there's a killer on the loose), the pace is lethargic, the kill scenes are unimaginative & to top it all off the twist ending is poor.Director Mas does alright, the film looks OK for the most part although there are the odd occasions where he uses some annoying post production editing technique like slow motion or frame skipping. The gore levels aren't really up to scratch, there's some blood splatter, a guy with a hole in his chest, a few dead bodies & someone impaled on some metal poles. Most of the kills happen off screen with the axe kill at the end a good example of the film not actually showing anything. Since the film is about a rock band there's quite a rock orientated soundtrack with some truly horrible, horrible rock songs used on it. I am sorry rock fans but to my ears this crap is just noise pollution. It's not scary, there's no real atmosphere & the lack of blood & gore is just inexcusable when the rest of the film is so bad.With a supposed budget of about $1,000,000 The Choke is well made with reasonable production values, it looks cheap to be sure but not as cheap as many low budget horror films look. Shot in a place called Spokane in Washington apparently. The acting is one of the films strongest points as it's generally pretty good all round, I mean no-one is going to win an Oscar but it ain't half bad.The Choke is a throughly routine Scream style teen slasher that has one of the weakest twist endings ever & a criminal lack of blood, gore, violence, nudity & dead bodies. I mean if a slasher hasn't got any sex or gore then what's the point? Those are the only things that the average slasher is worth watching for, right? | 0 |
train_11357 | "Citizen X" is the superbly told true story of the hunt for one of history's worst serial killers. What makes this story even more compelling is where and when it took place; the Soviet Union in the 1980's.** Mild Spoilers ** Viktor Burakov (magnificently played by Stephen Rea) is a newly promoted forensic investigator for the Rostov oblast militia. He discovers past and present unsolved murders, apparently by the same person. The murders are unsolved because no one has ever taken the trouble to properly investigate the evidence. He is driven to find and stop the killer. His only tools are his dedication, skill and honesty. His obstacles are the corruption and political ideology of the Soviet system that discourages the search for truth. His naiveté would have led to failure were it not for his boss, Col. Mikhail Fetisov (Donald Sutherland). Fetisov is a politically astute cynic who understands the game and knows how to deal with the Soviet bureaucracy. However, he also shares Burakov's desire to bring a murderer to justice, even if the official party line is "There are no serial killers in the Soviet Union!" The cast is outstanding. The locations and sets are perfect recreations of latter day Soviet life. Randy Edelman's score is particularly good. More important, this film shows a dark and disturbing criminal phenomenon with both intensity and poignancy. This was a made-for-cable movie by HBO Films and they have become a great resource for films that would otherwise never be made. | 1 |
train_2333 | I recently started watching this show, and I have to say that it really made me laugh. You have to appreciate the unrealistic aspects of it, along with everything else. Some other people said this show should have more realistic reactions of the dead, among other things. If you are going accept that Ned can bring the dead back to life, you have to accept that the other completely crazy bits of the show. I couldn't help smiling after every episode I watched. I really think it's great there is a show out there that can take a very strange subject and really make it great to watch. I absolutely love the narration, I think it adds that extra bit of wonder to the whole show. You can't always compare old shows by a writer to his new ones, you have to take everything as it's own entity. Definitely give it a chance, and just enjoy the ridiculous parts as they are. | 1 |
train_13526 | Wow. I do not think I have ever seen a movie with so many great actors that had such a pivotal role so miscast. Justin Timberlake is perhaps the single worst actor to land a bigtime role in a movie with the star power and money behind it that Edison had.His acting was PAINFUL to observe. The story was OK and all the other characters were played by professional actors, heck, even LL Cool J was fine since he has had numerous small parts to cut his teeth on. How the director and movie company figured that Timberlake was ready for this role there is no way to comprehend.His character ruins the entire experience since every time he is on screen you are actually rooting for the corrupt cops to cap his sorry ass, and he is supposed to be the hero... I would not waste money on this one at the theater or on video. MAYBE if you have HBO and have NOTHING else to do at 2am on a Saturday night and you are drunk and stoned, this may be OK.Watching Timberlake in this role was like watching a human 'Kermit the Frog' act in a Hollywood Blockbuster, just didn't work at all. | 0 |
train_9750 | Yes, Giorgio, is a feel good movie. A little romance, great music, beautiful scenery, comedy, (a great food fight), and a little taste of bittersweet are the ingredients of Yes, Giorgio. Any movie buff would enjoy this film. Those who require massive special effects, should look elsewhere. Most of us need a little escape now and then, and how better to do this, than with a feast for the eyes, ears, and heart? A must see! | 1 |
train_654 | In what could have been seen as a coup towards the sexual "revolution" (purposefully I use quotations for that word), Jean Eustache wrote and directed The Mother and the Whore as a poetic, damning critique of those who can't seem to get enough love. If there is a message to this film- and I'd hope that the message would come only after the fact of what else this Ben-Hur length feature has to offer- it's that in order to love, honestly, there has to be some level of happiness, of real truth. Is it possible to have two lovers? Some can try, but what is the outcome if no one can really have what they really want, or feel they can even express to say what they want? What is the truth in the relationships that Alexandre (Jean-Pierre Leaud) has with the women around him? He's a twenty-something pseudo-intellectual, not with any seeming job and he lives off of a woman, Marie (Bernadette Lafont) slightly older than him and is usually, if not always, his lover, his last possible love-of-his-life left him, and then right away he picks up a woman he sees on the street, Veronika (Françoise Lebrun), who perhaps reminds him of her. Soon what unfolds is the most subtly torrid love triangle ever put on film, where the psychological strings are pulled with the cruelest words and the slightest of gestures. At first we think it might be all about what will happen to Alexandre, but we're mistaken. The women are so essential to this question of love and sex that they have to be around, talking on and on, for something to sink in.We're told that part of the sexual revolution, in theory if not entirely in practice (perhaps it was, I can't say having not been alive in the period to see it first-hand), was that freedom led to a lack of inhibitions. But Eustache's point, if not entirely message, is that it's practically impossible to have it both ways: you can't have people love you and expect to get the satisfaction of ultimate companionship that arrives with "f***ing", as the characters refer over and over again. The Mother and the Whore's strengths as far as having the theme is expressing this dread beneath the promiscuity, the lack of monogamy, while also stimulating the intellect in the talkiest talk you've ever seen in a movie. At the same time we see a character like Alexandre, who probably loves to hear himself talk whether it's about some movie he saw or something bad from his past, Eustache makes it so that the film itself isn't pretentious- though it could appear to be- but that it's about pretentiousness, what lies beneath those who are covering up for their internal flaws, what they need to use when they're ultimately alone in the morning. If you thought films like Before Sunrise/Sunset were talky relationship flicks, you haven't met this. But as Eustache revels in the dialogs these characters have, sometimes trivial, or 'deep', or sexual, or frank, or occasionally extremely (or in a subdued manner) emotional, it's never, ever uninteresting or boring. On the contrary, for those who can't get enough of a *good* talky film, it's exceptional. While his style doesn't call out to the audaciousness that came with his forerunners in the nouvelle vague a dozen years beforehand, Eustache's new-wave touch is with the characters, and then reverberating on them.This is realism with a spike of attitude, with things at time scathing and sarcastic, crude and without shame in expression. All three of the actors are so glued to their characters that we can't ever perceive them as 'faking' an emotion or going at all into melodrama. It's almost TOO good in naturalistic/realism terms, but for Eustache's material there is no other way around it. Luckily Leaud delivers the crowning chip of his career of the period, and both ladies, particularly Labrun as the "whore" Veronika (a claim she staggeringly refutes in the film's climax of sorts in one unbroken shot). And, as another touch, every so often, the director will dip into a quiet moment of thought, of a character sitting by themselves, listening to a record, and in contemplation or quiet agony. This is probably the biggest influence on Jim Jarmusch, who dedicated his film Broken Flowers to Eustache and has one scene in particular that is lifted completely (and lovingly) in approach from the late Parisian.Sad to say, before I saw Broken Flowers, I never heard of Eustache or this film, and procuring it has become quite a challenge (not available on US DVD, and on VHS so rare it took many months of tracking at various libraries). Not a minute of that time was wasted; the Mother and the Whore is truly beautiful work, one of the best of French relationship dramas, maybe even just one of the most staggeringly lucid I've seen from the country in general. It's complex, it's sweet, it's cold, it's absorbing, and it's very long, perhaps too long. It's also satisfying on the kind of level that I'd compare to Scenes from a Marriage; true revelations about the human condition continue to arise 35 years after each film's release. | 1 |
train_15791 | First let me say that I am not a Dukes fan, but after this movie the series looked like Law and Order. The worst thing was the casting of Roscoe and Boss Hogg. Burt Reynolds is not Boss Hogg, and even worse was M.C. Gainey as Roscoe, If they ever watched the show Roscoe was not a hard ass cop. He was more a Barney Fife than the role he played in this movie.The movie is loaded with the usual errors, cars getting torn up, and continues like nothing happened. The worst example of this is when the the General gets together with Billy Prickett, and the General is ran into a dirt hill obviously slowing to a near stop, but goes on to win the race. | 0 |
train_9101 | The movie begins a with mentally-challenged girl with bright yellow sneakers looking skyward on a Madrid street corner and being spellbound by a passing plane. The movie examines the life of five womenAdela, Leire, Maricarmen, Anita & Isabelwho have completely different lives and choices of shoes. Their shoes is the first superficial, yet affixed with some glancing meaning, clue we get at their fragile identities. In a theatrically embroidered and embellished way, a podiatrist tries to esoterically reveal the deepest secrets of a woman's souls by the sole of her feet. The premise is risky and slightly contrived, but the tone and depth of the movie takes a daring plunge for the good.What may have been light-hearted and superficial, quickly switches gear with the a superb dysfunctional couple scene that leaves the viewer riveted for minutes, seeing the love or lack thereof, the pain, the confusion, the hope, the needs and escape mechanisms develop through minutes different rooms of the house and down to the street and eventually below... What a scene (!) , but there will be others as effective to follow and strengthen the strong characterization and directing displayed in this slice of life affair.Moving along, a woman has lost the husband she loved and inherited his kids and his taxi, while another has completely lost her husband emotionally, sexually, intellectually, but not physically. A ghost, a pending divorce
reproach, regret & remorse. A new love? Can you love a mirage? Can you love the person in the mirror? Can you love someone you can't love? Or think you can't love? Can you love and live life even though it will always be somewhat hopeless? Yet isn't it exactly these hopes and dreams that keep us here grounded and in a spectrum of relative happiness? A lot of deep themes emerge and the final act brings people and ideas together to coalesce in an existential crisis with no clear cut solution, definitive decision or effective healing. Maybe a elusive thought, a fleeting feeling, but a lasting appreciation of life and of the artistry and intellect of the film. Live. Live again. Rewind the reel. Unveil the real, the important; the big stones (piedras) of life. The rest is just details. | 1 |
train_12558 | When an attempt is made to assassinate the Emir of Ohtar, an Arab potentate visiting Washington, D.C., his life is saved by a cocktail waitress named Sunny Davis. Sunny becomes a national heroine and media celebrity and as a reward is offered a job working for the Protocol Section of the United States Department of State. Unknown to her however, the State Department officials who offer her the job have a hidden agenda.A map we see shows Ohtar lying on the borders of Saudi Arabia and South Yemen, in an area of barren desert known as the Rub al-Khali, or Empty Quarter. In real life a state in this location would have a population of virtually zero, and virtually zero strategic value, but for the purposes of the film we have to accept that Ohtar is of immense strategic importance in the Cold War and that the American government, who are keen to build a military base there, need to do all that they can in order to keep on the good side of its ruler. It transpires that the Emir has taken a fancy to the attractive young woman who saved him and he has reached a deal with the State Department; they can have their base provided that he can have Sunny as the latest addition to his harem. Sunny's new job is just a ruse to ensure that the Emir has further opportunities to meet her.A plot like this could have been the occasion for some hilarious satire, but in fact the film's satirical content is rather toned down. Possibly in 1984 the American public were not in the mood for trenchant satire on their country's foreign policy; this was, after all, the year in which Ronald Reagan carried forty-nine out of fifty states in the Presidential election and his hard line with the Soviet Union was clearly going down well with the voters. (If the film had been made a couple of years later, in the wake of the Iran/Contra affair, its tone might have been different).The film is not so much a satire as a vehicle for Goldie Hawn to show off her brand of cuteness and charm. Sunny is a typical Goldie character- pretty, sweet-natured, naive and not too bright. There is, however, a limit to how far you can go with cuteness and charm alone, and you cannot automatically make a bad film a good one just by making the leading character a dumb blonde. (Actually, that sounds more like a recipe for making a good film a bad one). Goldie tries her best to save this one, but never succeeds. Part of the reason is the inconsistent way in which her character is portrayed. On the one hand Sunny is a sweet, innocent country girl from Oregon. On the other hand she is a 35-year-old woman who works in a sleazy bar and wears a revealing costume. The effect is rather like imagining Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm grown up and working as a Bunny Girl.The more important reason why Goldie is unable to rescue this film is even the best comedian or comedienne is no better than his/her material, and "Protocol" is simply unfunny. Whatever humour exists is tired and strained, relying on offensive stereotypes about Arab men who, apparently, all lust after Western women, particularly if they are blonde and blue-eyed. There was a lot of this sort of thing about in the mid-eighties, as this was the period which also saw the awful Ben Kingsley/ Nastassia Kinski film "Harem", about a lascivious Middle Eastern ruler who kidnaps a young American woman, and the mini-series of the same name which told a virtually identical story with a period setting. The film-makers seem to have realised that their film would not work as a pure comedy, because towards the end it turns into a sort of latter-day "Mr Smith Goes to Washington". Sunny turns from a blonde bimbo into a fount of political wisdom and starts uttering all sorts of platitudes about Democracy and the Constitution and the Citizen's Duty to Vote and We The People and how the Price of Liberty is Eternal Vigilance blah blah blah
, but in truth the film is no more successful as a political parable than it is as a comedy.Goldie Hawn has made a number of good comedies, such as "Cactus Flower", "Overboard" and ""Housesitter", but "Protocol" is not one of them. I have not seen all of her films, but of those I have seen this dire comedy is by far the worst. 3/10 | 0 |
train_20333 | I just saw the third week of Stephen Kings' Nightmares and Dreamscapes mini series; meaning, I saw 6 episodes so far. I have to say that the stories are really weak. I have read Stephen King's Skeleton Crew, a collection of his short stories that was published way back. I recall most of the stories were average to poor but there was one that was really excellent, if not outstanding.What I'm trying to say is that just because this mini series is from a collection of stories from Stephen King does not mean that it will be any good. In fact, if his previous collection of short stories are of any indication, then most of this mini series will be average to poor.In Stephen King's defense, I have not read these new short stories. Perhaps they are good as stories in a book and not readily adaptable to television, or perhaps it was the fault of the scriptwriters in trying to write an interesting script. Who knows. Also, these short stories may have been made exclusively for this mini series and not not for print purpose. Maybe that may have been the problem. If Stephen King had submitted these crap stories to an editor, I am sure the editor would have immediately told him to make it more interesting because as is, it is simply boring.What is clear from all of this is that the problem is with the stories/script and not the actors and actresses because this mini series has some excellent people acting on it.Seeing this mini series really makes me appreciate those old "Twilight Zone" series. Each series was only half an hour but it was compelling and riveting. I don't understand why this mini series could not accomplish similar feat. I am sure this mini series had a good deal of money to make a good mini series but unfortunately, something must not have clicked.For instance, this week there were two episodes shown. The first involved a horror story writer who buys a picture drawn by an artist who committed suicide. The writer begins to see changes in the picture as he is driving homeward. Feeling uncomfortable, he throws away the painting but it keeps appearing near him. Also, the portrait of an individual in that picture is killing people and is out to kill him. (I will not even mention the second episode for this week involving criminals and their loot because it was even more boring than this episode!)This premise is interesting and so the story should be good but after seeing it, I was frustrated because there were too many gaps in the story as well as extraneous materials that was shown that did nothing to help the story. After the last scene, I was left with more questions than answers.I tried for 3 weeks to get into this mini series but it was just too aggravating due to poor stories/script. If this was a movie, I would have recommended that people should wait for the movie to come out on cable or such. I would not even recommend that it be rented in your video store. However, given that this is on TNT, a cable channel, I would say if you have not seen it already, then try it for one week. If you do not like it that week, then you will not like the past series nor the future ones, since they all share the same boring trait. | 0 |
train_13252 | Is it possible to give a movie NO STARS? I suppose not. However many stars IMDb displays this just think zero and you'll get my drift. Director and photographer Timothy Hines didn't have much of a budget compared to Spielberg's Herculean effort with the same material (rumored to be the most expensive movie ever made), but that need not be an insurmountable handicap. I've seen some wonderful work done on a comparative shoestring ("Soldier and Saints" is a recent example). With hard work, integrity and, above all, talent it is certainly possible to realize a faithful rendition of Wells' novella -- and at fraction of what was spent by Dreamworks on its "War of the Worlds". Unfortunately, Hines failed in all these departments. Even if he had had Spielberg's budget and Tom Cruise signed for the lead his movie would have stunk just as badly as this barnyard animal he's foisted on us.Primarily, Hines seems unable to tell a story. Thanks to digital video technology he can record images and sound, but he shows little aptitude for assembling a narrative with what he records. A guy walks down a country lane, a lot. He talks badly aped Received English to some other guy. Then he walks down the same lane, only shot from the back this time to show he's returning -- clever, eh? Walking and talking, for nearly an hour that's all that happens. OK, I'll grant that one extended excursion from the main character's house to the impact site on Horsell Common to show that it's a considerable distance from one place to the other might be useful (a first-year film student could storyboard a more economical and more aesthetical establishing sequence than this, btw), but half a dozen times? Back and forth, back and forth, et cetera, et cetera with some yakkity-yak in between. Remarkable. The only explanation for this surfeit of redundancy other than total artistic ineptitude is a desire to pad out thirty minutes of wretchedly amateurish CG works into something that could be offered as a feature-length film. Finally the Martian fighting machines appear and the walking and talking becomes running and talking, or shrieking. Later we get staggering and wailing for dessert.Thankfully, much of the dialogue is lifted straight from H.G. Wells' text; else we'd have no idea what is going on. But is it not the whole point of cinema to illuminate a text, to realize what words alone can't convey? If a film relies on dialogue or monologue to tell us what we see or how to feel, why bother? Why not do a radio play? Orson Welles made himself a household name doing just that. However, Hines thinks he's a filmmaker, so he's content to mouth the words and swallow the meaning.Secondly, Hines was able to buy some CG effects of a sort for his movie, but he has no idea how to use them. Now I for one have no unquenchable sweet tooth for eye candy. I believe good science fiction cinema doesn't need dazzling technical effects. Some really potent Sci-Fi's have flourished on virtually none at all. But "The War of the Worlds" as film requires a certain baseline effort. Wells tells a story that hinges on things can be seen and heard and even smelled. The effects don't need to be complex; they can even be crude (e.g. fighting machines on wires gliding over miniature streets as seen in the George Pal/Byron Haskins 1953 version), but they must be handled well. Unfortunately Hines' effects are both crude and incompetent tripod fighting machines higher than a cathedral spire stomp around making a noise like a pogo stick bouncing on linoleum Martian squidoids even though oppressed by four times the gravity of their native world scurry and flit about without perceptible effort skeletons totally denuded of flesh and muscle writhe and scream -- the same damn horse and buggy greenscreens its way across the foreground a dozen times (flipped left for right occasionally in hope that we might not notice) and on ad nauseum. Crude technique is forgivable. So you have a CG fire effect that's less than convincing? Fine, we can work around that. Just don't use it too often and only show glimpses of it. That stomped woman sequence looks more like a crushed plum? Throw it away. It's not necessary. You say your Martian flyer looks like a toy on a string? If you must use it, go ahead, but please don't show it twice! But no, Hines won't listen. We get the worst looking stuff used again and again. Gotta get those 180 minutes somehow, boy.Next we have acting, or more precisely too much acting. Whether in a speaking role or just paid to die on queue everybody in this film is acting his little heart out. Evidently Hines thinks he's getting a bargain -- More fleeing in terror over there! You, quaking behind that tree, let's have a real conniption fit this take. You call that writhing in agony? Nonsense, my grandmother can writhe better -- Nevertheless the cast as a whole and individually stink. They aren't even good amateurs. But this needn't prove fatal. Many a good movie has been made with rancid acting. That's what directors are for. And editors. Which brings up another point
Who the hell let Tim Hines edit this cheese factory? If America's butchers were as adept at meat cutting as Hines is at film cutting your next hamburger would be all fingers and no beef. In spite of the near three-hour running time there is lots of stuff missing from this movie -- not sequences, but single frames, creating a herky-jerky effect that's nauseating to watch. Maybe Hines intention was to simulate the effect of a hand cranked cine camera of the 1890's. If he was I can say he doesn't know how to do it. | 0 |
train_8503 | Sherman, set the wayback machine for... 1986. The United States was just climbing out of its worst postwar recession, while Japan was enjoying an unprecedented industrial boom. Manufacturing industries were still a significant part of the US economy, and factory workers were a good example of the "average American". The word "downsizing" hadn't entered the general vocabulary yet, but everyone knew the phenomenon. Bruce could be heard on the radio singing, "Foreman says these jobs are going, boy, and they ain't coming back to your hometown." Chrysler had just been bailed out by Uncle Sam. Bumper stickers could be seen saying "Buy American -- the job you save may be your own.""Gung Ho" does a better job of capturing the mood of the American industrial workforce than just about any other popular movie made during that period. Certainly the movie has its flaws -- some loose plot threads and mediocre acting jobs by everyone except Michael Keaton and Gedde Watanabe. But the story really is about the meeting of East and West: Keaton's Hunt Stevenson personifies America, brash and confident on the outside yet insecure underneath. Watanabe's Kazuhiro personifies Japan, on top of the heap with a successful system, but wondering if there is more to be learned from their Western rivals. The movie's plot, flawed as it is, simply provides a framework for the conflict, and eventually synthesis, of their two personalities.Keaton's acting overshadows everyone else's, and practically makes the movie by itself. I've always admired Keaton for his ability to deliver lines that feel improvised, no matter what script he's following. His character, Hunt Stevenson, is a likable, affable everyman, a natural leader with a wise-ass streak. But he has a fatal flaw common to many of us: he doesn't want to disappoint anyone. He'll distract the crowd with inspirational anecdotes, and even lie, rather than point out the ugly truth.Kazuhiro is the mirror image of Stevenson: shy and introspective, but also, because of his Japanese upbringing, reluctant to be the bearer of bad news. The scene in which Stevenson first comes to Kazuhiro with the employees' grievances captures perfectly the Japanese approach to workplace conflict. Kazuhiro replies to Stevenson's complaints with "I understand what you are saying," but won't refuse his requests out loud. Stevenson misinterprets this as agreement, and goes away saying, "Okay, we've got that settled." (This is still a problem in Japanese-American business relations in the 21st century!)Ultimately, Kazuhiro and Stevenson have the same problem: get the factory working smoothly, meet production goals, and fulfill their responsibility to the workers under them. In working towards this goal, they each have to take a page from the others' book. Kazuhiro's family becoming more "Americanized" is an obvious example. Also note that Stevenson thinks it's odd when Kazuhiro explains how he had to make a public apology to his workers for failing them -- and yet, later in the movie, Stevenson does exactly that himself.The plot and its resolution are a little cornball, but hey, this is a comedy. If you can overlook the movie's flaws, there is a great story about self-realization and open-mindedness here. | 1 |
train_3128 | Corny! I love it! Corny - just as the TV show was about 40 years ago! Adam and Burt rekindle the same on-screen chemistry that never seems to have left! They re-live old memories, plus the actors that play them from the 1960s show some behind-the-scenes things which are quite interesting to know. 1960s TV was corny escapism for so many of us back then, and this DVD is no exception, if you are familiar with the original TV show. The fight scene with the written Boofs and Bams or whatever is fantastic!! The movie theater scene shows clips of the villains who passed away. At the end Frank Gorshin makes an appearance. He passed away not too long after this DVD was made, I believe, so it is to his great credit that he came back to again play a villain to Adam and Burt, just as he did to Batman & Robin so many years ago. He didn't lose his touch! Thanks to Julie Newmar to re-living a villain role, also. In conclusion I think that this DVD is for great memories, and I wish to thank both Adam and Burt for coming back and recreating these memories for those of us who remember the original-!!! Thanks, Guys!!! | 1 |
train_23190 | i guess its possible that I've seen worse movies, but this one is a real stinker! the plot is unremarkable but thats not the worst of it. the directing is no where close to what you would expect from andy ching. he's capable of good work but failed to pull this movie together.angie harmon, playing the female lead as a reporter dogging into who's behind the assassination of the president, truly butchered the role. there was no chemistry with gooding, her demeanor was flat and wooden, and the 5 inch spike heels she wore throughout the movie were absurd. this outing for harmon places her solidly at the bottom of the "b" list.and what was cuba gooding thinking??? he has to his credit a number of outstanding performances, but this was far beneath what we've come to expect from him.poor james woods and burt reynolds. poor poor poor poor poor. | 0 |
train_3027 | I watch a lot of films, good, bad and indifferent; there is usually something of interest to fixate upon, even if it is only set design, or the reliable labor of a good character actor, or the fortuitous laughter that emerges from watching ineptitude captured forever.However, I was quite pleasantly surprised by this film, one I had never seen before. Graham Greene has been translated into film many times of course, in such masterpieces as "Thin Man" and in lesser vehicles. "Confidential Agent" is one of those lesser vehicles, yet it manages to get me somewhere anyway, despite lackluster direction, the incongruity of Bacall and Boyer's depictions as (respectively) British and Spanish, and the almost complete non-existence of any chemistry between the two leads. In some ways, this last "problem" actually begins to work in the film's favor, for how can love really blossom in the killing atmosphere of fascism and capitalism meeting about one person's tragedy? The most compelling aspect of the film arises directly from Greene's complex and guilt-ridden psychology, which pervades the film. I know some see the deliberate pacing here as dull, and I can understand that. Yet I found that plodding accentuated rather than detracted from what is a claustrophobic world. I was compelled to watch, not by any great acting (although Boyer is marvelous as usual, managing to convey a rich mixture of world-weariness, tragedy, hope, and fervor with his magnificent voice and yearning eyes), but by the down-spiraling rush of one man's slim hopes against a world of oppression and money. What is a thief? What good is love in the face of death? Where does mere profit-taking end and exploitation begin? The film does not rise to the level of art, and thus cannot hope to answer such questions, but it is much more than mere entertainment, and its murders and guilts are very grimly drawn. The lack of glitz, of "bubble," of narrative "bounce" help to make this movie very worthwhile.And there is no happy ending, for history wrote the ending. | 1 |
train_15431 | The sitcom "The league of Gentlemen" follows the lives of several bizarre inhabitants of the fictional village "Royston Vasey". The different scenes are linked together by their common setting.In the first series, a sketch show, the main plot deals with a new road which is going to be built through Royston Vasey. Consequently, more foreigners visit the small town. But Edward and Tubbs, the owners of a "local" shop, which is actually far away from the town, do not like foreigners. Whenever a visitor enters their shop, they kill him. In my opinion some scenes are kind of tasteless and not funny at all, for example, when the couple absorb two engineers who want to build the new road. Edward drums, while Tubbs is dancing half naked around the victims. Moreover Pauline lives in Royston Vasey. She works at the local Job Centre. Although Pauline hates the people she has to work with, the woman does not want to loose her job. So when an unemployed man gets an interview as fireman, she does not allow him to go because he is not ready for the job yet.Then there is Barbara Dixton, a transsexual taxi driver who goes into great detail about "her" sexual conversion.Furthermore the vet, Mr. Chinnery, always kills animals instead of curing them. In one case, he comes to a farm and is leaded into the sitting room, where a dog lays in his basket. The farmer goes outside. On the assumption that the dog is the sick animal, Mr. Chinnery euthanizes him. A second later, the farmer opens the door, holding the "real" sick animal, a sheep, in his hand.Some more inhabitants are a husband and his wife who are visited by their nephew (his friend is killed by the shop owners, by the way). The couple is very tidy. They have, for example, towels in different colours. Each colour stands for one part of the body. Besides, they have thousands of keys, marked with different colours and precisely classified.In my opinion, the actors play very well. By playing women, the scenes become comical. The costumes are suited to the actors, too. Tubbs is wearing a scarf and some crazy characters, for example Edward, have unappetizing black teeth. The show has a great deal of dark humour, typical British. The set design reflects the mood of the series. The village and all the houses look grey and are decayed. Around the local shop there is often fog which strengthens the threatening effect. Even the village sign is ominous: "Welcome to Royston Vasey. You will never leave."Although I think that the actors do a great job, this type of series is not my taste. | 0 |
train_1918 | I'll be honest with yall, I was a junior in high school when this sitcom first aired on ABC I didn't think I would like it at all. But with John Ritter in it i felt that it had a little potential in it, plus their was something else with it I liked. The acting was great, not a lot of horrible 2nd rated comedy lines, John Ritter always brings his A game when it comes to comedy . This was a great show to watch, and I'll tell you why it was a great show. My father who never watches sitcoms at all, he just watches movies, sports, and law & order, he actually sat down with my 3 brothers and 2 sisters, my mother, and myself, and watched the show I think because John Ritter was in it. I honestly think this show would still be running if John Ritter God rest his soul i wish he hadn't passed away. | 1 |
train_24597 | I wasn't really hoping for much when I went to see this. After Mst3king the heck out of JasonX with some friends though, I was hoping for a similar experience here.Unfortunately the movie took itself way too seriously. Do I care about Jason's problems? I'm sorry no. There are a legion Ft13th movies that cover that anyway. At at then end of the day, he's an undead serial killer, I'm just not going to get that sympathetic.Freddy was by far the most interesting aspect of the movie with the hallucinations and what not, but unfortunately they were few and far between and by the end of the movie, it had degenerated into a bad episode of celebrity deathmatch...only not funny. | 0 |
train_13669 | As interesting as a sheet of cardboard, this dispensable period piece has little going for it. It's overly wordy and fails spectacularly to evoke the tension and fear that the real-life characters must have felt as they dodged the French Revolution's fickle hand of justice. Eric Rohmer at 82? It shows. | 0 |
train_10880 | It isn't the worst film ever made, the actors aren't apalling and the script and director are not completely inept. It isn't the best film ever made, the actors aren't excellent and the script and director are not completely brilliant.It falls somewhere in the middle. A fun somewhere. An enjoyable, well constructed somewhere.No need to say "don't take it seriously" or "so bad its good" or "it wasn't scary". None of these comments are relevant. Cut has atmosphere. It's that atmosphere which is actually very unique, and the one really original aspect of the movie, which personally is what makes the film, for me. | 1 |
train_15652 | Poorly structured, badly written, loaded with cliches and flat dialogue. Not a single scene shines. The actors struggle with a painfully dull scenario that manages to completely avoid any surprises, plot twists or conflict. You know from the first ten minutes where it's going.For a movie set in NY, it has almost no feeling for the city. There are a dozen other indie movies that manage to make it seem magical on a small budget. This one seems like it was shot in Toronto.If you cast Natasha Henstridge, why dress her in baggy sweaters? Why make Vartan look boring and drab? Where's the attraction? I felt like I was watching a sub-par Christian movie of the week it was so asexual and moralizing.Steven Feder's big success is that he convinced people to make this bland movie. | 0 |
train_7251 | I have seen this film only the one time about 25 years ago, and to this day I have always told people it is probably the best film I have ever seen. Considering there was no verbal dialogue and only thought dialogue i found the film to be enthralling and I even found myself holding my breath so as not to make any sound. I would highly recomend this film, I wish it was available on DVD. | 1 |
train_10604 | Henry Thomas showed a restraint, even when the third act turned into horrible hollywood resolution that could've killed this movie, that kept the dignity of a redemption story and as for pure creepiness-sniffing babies? | 1 |
train_2906 | A hilarious Action comedy in which Damian Szifron takes into the lives of Díaz, a cop whose wife has cheated on him. He is living in a hotel feeling guilty about his wife's unfaithfulness, falling into depression he stops caring, running red lights just for fun, feeling sorry for himself. And Silberman, a Jewish shrink on probation, a leftist liberal who does not trust cops at all. He is told to accompany Díaz in his daily duties, unable to refuse due to the terms of his probation. Soon the situation reverts when Silberman himself finds out his wife is cheating on him, and ends up being comforted by the very person he was supposed to help, a person he did not trust at all in the beginning. A nuclear conspiracy, car thieves, international spies, a hysterical wife. Weird characters in a delightful comedy about friendship and heroism. | 1 |
train_4985 | People don't seem to be giving Lensman enough credit where its due. A few issues have been overlooked which are key to understanding the Lensman experience.The Year: For the year it was made in (1984) Lensman features some of the most stunning effects I've ever seen. As a person who watches a lot of early 80's animation Lensman is unique in it's use of what appears to be computer-generated imagery at a time when computers were extremely primitive. Kim's battle against the geometric cutter pods in the laser maze can be taken as an excellent example of this. Every time I watch that I have to keep repeating to myself that it was 1984 when it was made.The Soundtrack: Lensman has one of the most insane soundtracks that I've heard, and this mad hysterical beat permeates every corner of the film. Lensman borrowed heavily on two western mistakes and managed to somewhat deal with the first one - the need to fill in every second of silence in a film with music and the need for a heroine. While the music is attuned well and galvanizes scenes such as the motorcycle battle in the Thionite Factory on Radelyx, the heroine theme fails due to the sheer annoyance value of Chris. It's interesting to note that the constant music thwarted my attempts at noise removal when I was archiving lensman over from analog tape to digital format - since there wasn't a single second of silence available to use as a reference point.Western Influences: Helmut - sounds like "helmet" and has roughly the same voice as Darth Vader. Clarissa Fairborn - has the same hairstyle as the princess of SW and her name sounds suspiciously similar to Marissa Fairborn of Transformers. Takes over Han Solos role by flying the ship and having some technical expertise. Buzzkirk - a definite improvement on Chewbaka. The lens - a nice concrete copy of the force that comes across less as a chance to preach Christianity at the audience than in the original SW. While the force relied on belief far more than concentration, the lens is a pure concentration tool. Theoretically, anyone could wield the lens. The lens is far more limited than the Force - being purely a defensive/offensive weapon.Technology: The boskone alliance have interesting meatball sponge ships. They look like stormtroopers only with red uniforms instead of white. The idea of a DNA weapon was nice if only it had been developed. The Galactic Alliance looked like Starblazers (or whatever it was called - that 60's series where they were battling the Xylons). There weren't enough ship to ship battles for me - this is much improved upon in the second Lensman film.Finally a note on Worzel. This character is a unique and very interesting character-design who fortunately continues on to the second film. | 1 |
train_2038 | This film exceeded my expectations. I thought and have heard that it was going to be rubbish, so i wasn't expecting much. However, i was pleasantly surprised. At first i didn't take well to the lead girl and didn't really care if she lived or died. After a while she definitely grew on me and became a likable character. It's not just some slasher film where people die for no reason. There is a background story that only takes a few seconds of the film, but explains a lot. I would recommend this film to everyone. If you're not sure just watch it anyway, it's only an hour and a half of your life. You're going to live for 80 years anyway. | 1 |
train_19516 | 54 is a film about a club with that very title in the setting of the 70s era. It features the classic good-looking bartender. The sexy females. The high powered owner. The partying. When all entwined together chaos ensues, and the bartender (played by Phillipe) seems to be at the brunt of it all.I'm going to be as blunt and honest as possible, whilst avoiding any outright unfair or untrue comments (like, it's an 'ok' film). I really do find it a completely dire film complimented by it's dire cast. Every time I sit down to watch a film casting Salma Hayek, I am always awaiting to see her beauty, radiantly expressed simultaneously with a great performance, but, reality invariably reminds me quite abruptly how utterly talentless she is. I mean, really, what has she ever bequeathed the masses with, other than her immense table dance in 'From Dusk Till Dawn'...? The same goes for Ryan Phillippe, another poor actor who gives nothing to the screen but his good looks and insanely dull facade otherwise known as 'acting'. Mike Myers, isn't quite as bad as these 2, he does at least give the Film something worthy. Playing the seedy, extroverted co-founder of the 54 Club. The type that the majority watching would hate (i.e. job well done), he puts in a somewhat convincing performance that gave me rare enjoyment from the flick. But alas, it is not enough to rescue the film from it's baseless and flat nothingness. Most 'bad' bad films I find something to take from the film, but this has nothing to it, really. Neve Campbell isn't too bad, but she is just 'there'. The storyline is dull, it appears the writer was more bent on making a film of this style and embellishment and forgot to add anything else. Any meaning. Any class. Anything at all. Because like most ornaments, they are just hollow pointless objects, that are merely pretty to look at, much akin to the basis of this disastrous film.Genuinely an hour and a half of time I could have spent better doing something much more exciting, like talking to 90 year old relatives on the phone about the weather. | 0 |
train_6334 | This movie has some things that are pretty amazing. First, it is supposed to be based on a true story. That, in itself, is amazing that multiple tornadoes would hit the same town at night in the fall-in Nebraska. I wonder if the real town's name was close to "Blainsworth" (which is the town's name in the movie). There is an Ainsworth, Nebraska, but there is also a town that starts with Blains-something.It does show the slowest moving tornadoes on record in the the seen where the boys are in the house. On the other hand, the scene where the TV goes fuzzy is based in fact. Before Doppler radar and weather radio, we were taught that if you turned your TV to a particular channel (not on cable) and tuned the brightness just right, you could tell if there was a tornado coming. The problem was that by then you would be able to hear it. Since I know something about midwest tornadoes, it made this movie fun for me. I enjoy it more than Twister. I mean, give me a break-there is no way you could make it through and F5 by chaining yourself to a pipe in a well house. | 1 |
train_19505 | What if Somerset Maugham had written a novel about a coal miner who decided to search for transcendental enlightenment by trying to join a country club? If he had, he could have called it The Razor's Edge, since the Katha-Upanishad tells us, "The sharp edge of a razor is difficult to pass over; thus the wise say the path to Salvation is hard." But Maugham decided to stick with the well-bred class, and so we have Darryl F. Zanuck's version of Larry Darrell, recently returned from WWI, carefully groomed, well connected in society and determined to find himself by becoming a coal miner. Or, as Maugham tells us, "This is the young man of whom I write. He is not famous. It may be that when at last his life comes to an end he will leave no more trace of his sojourn on this earth than a stone thrown into a river leaves on the surface of the water. Yet it may be that the way of life he has chosen for himself may have an ever growing influence over his fellow men, so that, long after his death, perhaps, it will be realized that lived in this age a very remarkable creature." The Razor's Edge has all of Zanuck's cultural taste that money could buy. It's so earnest, so sincere...so self-important. As Larry goes about his search for wisdom, working in mines, on merchant ships, climbing a Himalayan mountain to learn from an ancient wise man, we have his selfish girl friend, Isabel, played by Gene Tierney, his tragic childhood chum played by Anne Baxter, the girlfriend's snobbish and impeccably clad uncle played by Clifton Webb, and Willie Maugham himself, played by Herbert Marshall, taking notes. The movie is so insufferably smug about goodness that the only thing that perks it up a bit is Clifton Webb as Elliot Templeton. "If I live to be a hundred I shall never understand how any young man can come to Paris without evening clothes." Webb has some good lines, but we wind up appreciating Clifton Webb, not Elliot Templeton. Zanuck wanted a prestige hit for Twentieth Century when he bought the rights to Maugham's novel. He waited a year until Tyrone Power was released from military service. He made sure there were well-dressed extras by the dozens, a score that sounds as if it were meant for a cathedral and he even wrote some of the scenes himself. The effort is as self-conscious as a fat man wearing a rented tux. Despite Hollywood's view of things in The Razor's Edge, I can tell you that for most people hard work doesn't bring enlightenment, just weariness and low pay. After nearly two-and-a-half hours, we last see Larry carrying his duffle bag on board a tramp steamer in a gale. He's going to work his way back to America from Europe with a contented smile on his face. "My dear," Somerset Maugham says to Isabel at the same time in an elaborately decorated parlor, "Larry has found what we all want and what very few of us ever get. I don't think anyone can fail to be better, and nobler, kinder for knowing him. You see, my dear, goodness is after all the greatest force in the world...and he's got it!" Larry and the audience both need a healthy dose of Dramamine. Maugham, lest we forget, was a fine writer of plays, novels, essays and short stories. To see how the movies could do him justice, watch the way some of his short stories were brought to the screen in Encore, Trio and Quartet. And instead of wasting time with Larry Darrell, spend some time with Lawrence Durrell. The Alexandria Quartet is a good read. | 0 |
train_9281 | I don't know how and where do the Iranian directors get their inspiration in coming up with a plot like this. In fact, it's a very simple plot that many directors could come up with --- but may not be able to project it onto a movie the way Jafar Panahi did.The film is like 2 worlds revolving at the same time, one connected to the other - the football match and the battle between sexes that's going on behind the walls of the stadium.It makes you feel like you are in the movie and you're one of the characters, and while watching the movie, as if you also would like to have a glimpse of the football match. You will feel exactly the same excitement and sentiments as those female actors in the movie. It's gripping in a way that you wanted to see the ending, you will want to find out the verdict, you'll be dying to see what will happen to the girls.I like the intermittent conversations between the smoking girl and one of the military trainee. It's like venus VS mars, it really shows the difference in the thinking of men and women and the struggle of women to get equal rights and opportunity especially in a very patriarchal society like Iran.This is the second movie of Jafar Panahi that I have seen (the first being Crimson Gold) and am looking forward to watching some more.Am already hooked with Iranian movies and this one is a must-see! | 1 |
train_1371 | This film is a delightful, light hearted look at both sides of where the "club kid" rave scene blends with the New York art, music and performance art worlds (with a cameo by the omnipresent Miss Bunny). This is "Torch Song Trilogy" for the perky-post-teen girls. "That Girl" for our disaffected, affected millennium times.The dialogue is fast and funny, and Parker Posey's costumer deserves - if not an academy award, at least - a stadium "wave" of kudos.Of course, this film rests on the very stylish platform heels of Miss Posey, and she is perfectly cast. Like a lot of her acting work, it may not be very deep, it is often self-referential and, well, posey... but it all WORKS. She is a talented comedienne, an incredible entertainer, and this film entertains, she carries it on her shoulders like a faux leopard wrap, and never lets it drop to the floor.Mary is a superficial party fashionista who isn't above stealing designer clothing from a friend's closet or making out with someone else's boyfriend. On a deeper level, this is a story of a girl and her friends who are care-less in every sense of the word, including about other people; and the process of learning that caring is necessary to life. The script is beautifully crafted, witty, and the only performance that disappoints is the Aunt, in a role that was much too one-dimensional and heavy handed; a more nuanced performance from her, would have deepened the relationship between the two... but... hey... this is comedy. A surprisingly deep role, that gives this film some substance and world vision, is the fallafel selling boyfriend. We should all be so lucky... is he the one for Mary? or the one that gets away? I rate this as a 8 because it isn't a great moment of film history, it is not a classic, and it is not great art (all of which get deeper and richer on re-viewing). Like "Desperately Seeking Susan" it represents something very true about it's time period, but may become irrelevant with time. Still, it has everything an entertaining film needs, and is worth viewing several times for the clothes alone! | 1 |
train_23887 | Medellin is a fabulous place to live, work, and study. I've been there twice, and never did I hear anything about guerrilla activities, paramilitaries taking tourists hostage, or anything of the sort. There are "invisible police," but it is *not* a Big Brother system. There are just enough police so that they are visible in everyday life, but they do not hassle someone without good reasons.La Sierra is an interesting documentary in that the youths it depicts in the movie essentially become its characters. The directors of the movie carefully carve out plot lines among the daily actions of the inhabitants of La Sierra, and when a "character" dies, there is genuine pathos. It is difficult to imagine, however, that the three youths are all members of the Bloque Metro, a gang that used to terrorize La Sierra before the Colombian government began to restructure the country.La Sierra is not an accurate depiction of life in Colombia; there are, of course, things to be wary of such as petty crime, but when one considers pickpocketing happens in "modern" cities such as London, New York, or Tokyo, Colombia doesn't seem that different after all. Colombians are eagerly awaiting their chance to show to the world that the once war-torn country is now prospering more than ever. | 0 |
train_24065 | So far after week two of "The lone of Beauty" I am a little disappointed.Some of the acting is good, as long as we except that it is only drama.I am unsure how people can feel that this FICTIONAL DRAMA is "factual" coverage of the "Thatcher" years - it is okay as drama, but I feel the award winning book is still much better.I Wonder if the BBC will ever give us the follow up and the next part of the drama and the years that follow with "Things Can Only Get Better" finishing with 2006 and the Fact that we are still waiting! with that promise from a Government that is full of sleaze. | 0 |
train_17332 | i was intrigued to see how a little-seen 2008 film had somehow won the Oscar for best picture of 2009 and thus went to see The Hurt Locker. sadly, all i got for the two hours invested was the grim confirmation that this film had won awards purely for off-the-screen reasons.the direction and visual style of this film is some of the weakest you will ever see. when it's not busy being yet another Bourne Identity homage with dire, annoying "shaky cam" visuals, it shows off all the hallmarks of a second rate daytime soap opera in terms of lensing.the "plot" is threadbare, the characterizations are about as well developed as rejected Beetle Bailey comic strip ideas and the dialogue - on the instances where the film gives up on being "minimalist" and for no apparent reason turns one or two soldiers into right chatterboxes - is some of the worst ever recorded. in fairness, the actors do the best they can in the circumstances, just not enough to obscure how bad the project is.the whole film has the feel of it being intended as some kind of "mockumentary" that they clocked was bereft of humour and thus re-edited as best they could so as to pass it off as a serious drama.if you spend two hours on this film they are two hours you will never get back, and two hours wasted that you will regret for the rest of your life. | 0 |
train_7418 | "Shower" is an story about loyalty, about the unstoppable advance of modern world in the detriment of rather traditional and more human ways of life. A man forced to choose between his successful career in business, his big-city life, his wife, and his retarded young brother. The eternal doubt between what we WANT to do and what we SHOULD do. The modern China versus the ancient one. The public baths with its gatherings, its cricket fights versus the shopping centres and the skyscraper. Lots of old men and women that are no longer needed. China, one country, two systems, as Xiao Ping said ... though one of them is killing the other. Tender, moving, full of funny moments, and of bitter-sweet ones.The sensitive ones will cry and laugh equally. The actors are enormous, especially the one who performs the role of the retarded boy; and Yang Zhang makes a good job, easy, simple, letting the story just flow by itself.My rate: 8/10 | 1 |
train_14707 | Hammerhead is a combination between the mad scientist and killer shark movie genres. In a bit of type-casting, Jeffrey Combs plays the aforementioned mad scientist who develops a human/hammerhead shark creature. Bizarrely, this being is in fact his son, who he has turned into this monster to prevent him dying from cancer. Or something.A group of associates are invited to the scientist's private island. They end up being used as shark bait or shark mate. For some unknown reason the head of IT has been brought along as part of this team. Who knows why? Luckily, he turns out to be a resourceful, if somewhat overweight, Ramboesque hero. I'm working on the assumption that he learnt how to handle an assault rifle as part of his day job working in 1st line support. A normal day for this IT man presumably involves fixing someone's network connection followed by a call to gun down gun-toting evil-doers. Or perhaps a call to fix someone's PC has to be scheduled between physical confrontations with land-based human-shark hybrids? Anyway, he's amazing and saves the day. He even get's the girl.The shark-man is a slightly lame creation but OK, I guess, judging by the effects in general in this film. And the movie moves on at a decent pace. It's complete hokum of course but if you buy a movie called Hammerhead and expect it to be a complex drama about the emotional conflicts experienced by a man turned into a land-based killer fish, then really you have no one to blame but yourself. As it is, there are guns, gore, girls and possibly even an exploding helicopter. It's rubbish but not as bad as some might say. | 0 |
train_7358 | One of the most provocative films ever with excellent cinematography backed up by Mc Clarens lisp and stunning quote "do you believe in love at first site?".A trace of expressionism was evident in this picture, further catapulting the films flawless integrity. Gabby (AKA Joey) played by Eva Longoria clearly loved the movie and role she played so much that she couldn't even be bothered giving it mention in her filmography. Lol.the best part of the movie would have to be without a doubt, the heroic rescue by MC clure as he saved the young 'Handicapped' kid with the speech impediment.. Which i may add was acted to perfection! James Cahiil's use of sound effects is unmatched even to this day. The drug bust he performs early in the film is pain stakingly realistic. When i watched this movie for the first time i was so compelled with the intense lack of respect for the Gang Inthused brothers from the Southside gang and the CTM (Cut Throat Mafia). This was by far one of the most encapsulating crevice Cahill has committed to filming.Personally this film holds sentimental value to me and i will be downloading it in the near future. Thats if i can find it anywhere, LOL! | 1 |
train_23122 | I actually have a fondness for Christopher Lee, but this just wasn't up to his other performances... and he was one of the better actors.The film does not live up to its premise. It's not that scary, it's overly melodramatic, and it draaaaaags. Every time I thought, "Oh, HERE comes the good part" the good part never quite arrived.The Evil Ones aren't at all convincing. Most of the other characters were also lacking in depth.Perhaps if I'd been in the proper frame of mind, I might have enjoyed some MSTie-fication at this film's expense, but.... Naaahhh... Didn't really seem to be worth the effort. It wasn't really very good, it wasn't really very bad, it was just mediocre. | 0 |
train_12006 | The most amazing, spiritually uplifting movie about the restoration of the gospel. Far better than any other film, or movie made about the restoration thus far. If you haven't seen it, hop on a plane to Salt Lake and see it now. You won't regret it! You truly get a sense of what the first saints had to struggle through, putting complete and total faith in there prophet Joseph Smith. You finally get some sort of comprehension of the things the prophet had to fight through and the persecutions he and his people faced. If you have any questions about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-days Saints and our humble beginnings just watch this movie, it will make complete and total sense afterward. | 1 |
train_23628 | As good an advert for republicanism as you're ever likely to see,"Mayerling"is an everyday story of royal folk in late nineteenth century Austria.Set during one of Europe's seemingly incessant internal turmoils it concerns itself with the Emperor Franz Joseph (Mr James Mason),his rebellious son,the Crown Prince Rudolf (Mr Omar Sharif)the Empress(Miss Ava Gardner) and various mistresses,secret policemen,spies,extravagantly-uniformed popinjays,gypsies,dancers,wives, soldiers,swans,horses and the bizarre inbred web of European royalty at the time of Franz Joseph's Austro-Hungarian Empire. Filmed in what the old movie posters used to call "A Riot of Color" it resembles nothing more than an expensively-dressed but intellectually-challenged production of "The Student Prince" .Mr James Mason,wearing a very natty little white number,utilises his all-purpose mittel-European accent whenever he remembers.I am a great admirer of his and I sincerely hope the remuneration was comensurate with the distaste he clearly felt for the character he was playing. Mr Omar Sharif,who built a career largely founded on looking directly at the camera with his big brown eyes and looking soulful,gives a stupefyingly monotonous performance as his son the Crown Prince.He is utterly unconvincing as a man who -in the movie at least-cut a swathe through the distaff side of the Austrian aristocracy.With his well-buttered locks firmly in place he preens and poses in ever more unlikely uniforms.As a rebel he talks the talk but conspicuously fails to walk the walk,leaving a bottom button undone on one of his tunics is about as far as his defiance goes.Unhappily married,he falls in love with a commoner."Forbidden Love" is one of the movie's come-ons.As she is played by the most uncommon Miss Catherine Deneuve he is scarcely pushing the envelope there.Miss Deneuve has a profile to die for and we see rather a lot of it,particularly in the sequence set at the ballet. Now I love ballet as much as the next man,but this sequence does seem to go on for an excessive amount of time,a more cynical critic might consider it to be "padding". Rudolf's mother,the Empress is played by Miss Ava Gardner.She gives the part some good old American oooomph,making her a bit like "Auntie Mame",but it's done with undeniable style.Rudolf is certainly very fond of his mother - I'll put it no more strongly than that. The only performance worth watching is that of Mr James Robertson Justice as Sir Lancelot Spratt - sorry,Edward,Prince of Wales.He is so wonderfully unconcerned about everything going on around him it's a joy to behold.I waited vainly for him to ask Rudolf the immortal question "What's the bleeding time?". I am not qualified to dispute "Mayerling" 's historical accuracy,but,in my opinion,everything else about it is risible. It is a Ruritanian Opera Buffa without the tunes to send you home from the theatre whistling. | 0 |
train_22986 | My main comment on this movie is how Zwick was able to get credible actors to work on this movie? Impressive cast even for the supporting characters, none of which helps this movie really. I have to admit though, Tom Hank's cameo almost made it worth it what was that about Tom? Did you lose a bet? The best cameo of the movie was Joe Isuzu though - by far a classic! The premise is good. Basinger's character, struggling with existence as a Pink Lady, is making her way toward Vegas motel by motel pitching the glorious pyramid of cosmetic sales. This happens as Corbett's character is on his way to Vegas to deliver an Elvis suit to his soon to be ex-wife motivated by
.what else
.extortion. As they both make their way, they have numerous run-ins with Elvis impersonators who on their way to an Elvis impersonating convention in Vegas. Soon, the FBI gets involved and begins to track what they think is an Elvis impersonator serial killer. Unfortunately, premise doesn't mean the movie was good.When watching this movie, imagine you are back in the first grade when story lines and continuity aren't really important. It is much more enjoyable to just watch Basinger look beautiful in her Pink Lady outfit rather than wondering why what she is doing doesn't really make sense. The movie tries hard, but ultimately falls way way way short. Ultimately, it is filled with ideas that could have theoretically been funny but in practice were not that funny.It isn't the worst, but you may find you yourself feel like leaving the building when watching this one
Don't say I didn't warn you! | 0 |
train_14880 | When it comes to movies, I am generally easily entertained and not very critical, but must say that this movie was one big flop from the start. I gave it 30 minutes and then rewound it. What a waste of some great talent! I was very disappointed with this movie, as it was not what I expected. | 0 |
train_17867 | I have seen every episode of this spin off. I thought the first season was a decent effort considering the expectations of following such a success that is Grey's Anatomy. Thus i have continued to watch. I'm afraid the second season lacks the charm, the chemistry and more importantly the drama of it's predecessor Grey's Anatomy. The relationships seem contrived and the acting is so-so. The writing lacks the intelligence and comedic hints seen in GA. There are shows that a formulaic but do not feel formulaic and contrived, unfortunately PP is not so. I loved Kate Walsh's presence in GA. I'm afraid Kate Walsh's life in LA is simply not interesting. | 0 |
train_20058 | what ever you do do not waste your time on this pointless. movie. A remake that did not need to be retold. Everyone coming out of the theater had the same comments. Worst movie I ever saw. Save your time and money!!!Nicgolas Cage was biking down hills, swimming in murky water and rolling down hills while being attacked by bees but yet his suit was still perfectly pressed and shirt crisp white until the very last scene.Although a good cast with Ellen Bernstein and Cage the acting was just as unbelievable as the movie itself. It is amazing how good actors can do such bad movies. Don't they get a copy of the script first. If you still have any interest at all in seeing the movie at the very least wait for it to come out on DVD. | 0 |
train_500 | I, like many die-hard Trekkers (or Trekkies, i don't care!) suffered through seven seasons of "Star Trek Voyager", dreaming of a better show when it was over, lamenting the end of "Deep Space Nine" in 1999. prayers, answered. "Enterprise" is fantastic. Fresh perspective, radically different characters, stunning new visuals, a pop-song for the intro. (I was shocked!) I can't think of anything I didn't like. sign me up for 10 seasons of this show. "Star Trek" is back - "Voyager," nobody misses you! Keep on Trekkin'!> | 1 |
train_20983 | I normally only write reviews for movies I really hated or really liked. And, as you can probably tell from the number of stars up there, I didn't like it. By now, I assume you have read about the plot or maybe even seen the movie, so I'll skip the summary. Let's break this down, pros and cons:Cons: The concept: The premise was set up to be interesting. Using Chaos theory as a theme was interesting. However, it wasn't carried out so well. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems to me that Chaos theory was kind of misrepresented. The event that occurred in the movie seemed more like contrived coincidence than anything. I guess the Butterfly effect was represented by the whole "God(s) causes Tsunami to bring back statue." The presentation comes off as really sloppy though. Some people call this intelligent, but it just seems to be another souped up action film.Storyline: Is it just me, or does it seem that Kamal just threw this together to give him an excuse to play ten roles? The plot is extremely contrived; Govind kept losing the vial so many times in obscure accidents (his friend just happens to mix up the vial with a package he was sending to India, a crazy old lady just happens to throw the vial into an idol, half the cast just happens to unexpectedly meet up in the same hospital, and the case with the idol just happened to get mixed up with one that belonged to a famous singer.)CGI: Oh god, the CGI. It was even worse than the special effects in Jaws 3, and those sucked. Right away, I could tell which parts were animated. Even my ten-year-old cousin knows that underwater cars don't look like that. Stunts: Yes, I now that action scenes in Tamil movies aren't realistic, but the stunts in this one were horrid and actually distracted me from the story.Make up: I have to admit, they did a better job than expected. I thought Kamal would be playing people with similar skin tones, so the two fake white guys and the fake Japanese Aikido guy caught me off guard. However, it was still pretty bad, I could easily tell which ones were wearing masks.The songs: The music was distracting and out-of-place in many instances.Asin: Her character was possibly the most annoying one in the movie. She was loud, ditsy, and obsessed irrationally about that idol. I actually found myself wishing she would die.Plot holes and Fridge Logic: Let me get this straight: a lab monkey was smart enough to get past a password-locked door, but not intelligent enough to tell the difference between a bar of chocolate and a vial with a deadly virus in it. And then, an ex-CIA agent who's after the vial figures out it's headed for India. Instead of immediately following it, he marries a pole dancer first. A famous Punjabi singer with cancer checks into a small town hospital in the third world when he could easily afford the best medical treatment available. Furthermore, he gets shot in the throat with a bullet. You'd think he would be killed, but instead, the magic bullet has cleared his tumor. You read that right, a BULLET knocked out the tumor. Pros... The Naidu Character: Possibly the only likable part of the movie was his comedy. | 0 |
train_2210 | I can't believe how many people hate Hal Sparks! He was my favorite host of the show, hands down. I hate celebrity gossip and generally dislike talk shows, but when Hal Sparks hosted Talk Soup, it was must see TV for me. I rarely missed an episode during his run, and was saddened when the guest hosts started pouring in (although most of the guests still did a fine job). Anyway, for all the people who dislike Hal Sparks, I imagine they must have never seen the weekend specials. They were hour long episodes of Talk Soup that comprised the best clips from the entire week, and were padded out by sketch comedy bits. The original bits that Hal Sparks did were hilarious. In one he got possessed by a bad comedy demon, and in an exorcist like scene his head spun as he told dated jokes about airline food. One episode was dedicated to making fun of Multiplicity, as a bunch of cloned Hal Sparks kept multiplying through out the episode, over-running the studio.OK, maybe these don't sound as funny when I describe them, but all I know is that besides Talk Soup, the only other two shows I watched consistently during those years was The Simpsons and Late Night with Conan O'Brian. So if you like the comedy stylings of those shows, then you'd probably like Talk Soup during the Sparks years.That said, Henson and Tyler were both great hosts as well. All three hosts brought something different to the table but they were all fine comedians in my opinion. Of course, throughout the Tyler and guest star years, my interest in this show began to wane, but every now and then I catch The Soup, the show's spiritual successor, and sure enough, the new host can bring some pretty unexpected laughs from time to time.OK, I've wasted enough time talking about a TV show that isn't on the air anymore and on a channel that I generally despise. Go watch something else! | 1 |
train_19078 | Unentertaining, uninvolving hybrid of "Cruel Intentions" and "Wild Things", but it isn't nearly as good as either of those trash min-classics. It's about the acting sheriff, Artie (Taye Diggs) being called in to investigate a near-fatal drug overdose at a posh upper-class Univesity, but to keep it on the down low. As he digs deeper he thinks it's much more than it at first glance seems to be. We follow Alicia, the girl who overdosed in flashbacks as well. At about 90 minutes, if this film was welcomed to begin with, it would have worn it out. This film brings absolutely nothing new to the table. But it IS the only movie thus far that has Miss Swain topless so the grade is higher just for that.My Grade: DEye Candy: Dominique Swain gets topless( fixing a mistake of "Happy Campers"); another girl is topless Anti-Eye candy: more men ass than girl tit | 0 |
train_1905 | Quite simply the funniest and shiniest film-comedy of all time... it's certainly on my personal top-ten list. This one also gets a solid ten on the voting scale. Millionaire heir, Arthur Bach (Moore), is a middle-aged 'child' who refuses to take the mature path in life and avoids all requisite responsibilities. He also refuses to leave the bottle. One day he and his personal butler, Hobson (Gielgud), go shopping at Bergdorf Goodman's and run into petty larcenist, Linda (Minnelli). Arthur and Linda's chemistry adds electricity to the rest of the film. There are hilarious set pieces aplenty. In one such scene, Arthur (drunk throughout most of the story) knocks on the wrong apartment door and receives ear shattering threats from a human 'siren' ("My husband has a gun!!!!). Performances by everyone involved should be duly noted: Geraldine Fitzgerald plays Arthur's loving-yet-ruthless grandmother, Sir John Gielgud almost steals the entire show with his acidic droll-isms (He took home the Oscar for this one), and Christopher Cross provides the Main Theme song (Oscar winner "Best That You Can Do"). It's a shame the late Dudley Moore passed away last month (March 2002). | 1 |
train_2953 | This is not the stuff of soap-operas but the sort of conundrums that real people face in real life. A testament to the ensemble and director for the powerful story-telling of fallible characters trying to cope but not quite succeeding. | 1 |
train_23758 | I've said this in other reviews, without a story, you can give the audience all the smoke and mirrors you want, still no one will give a damn.The director seems to have a great eye for 30s art deco (which I love), and I think the idea of using all digital backgrounds and such could indeed be the wave of the future in movie making. However, it's obvious the director got so interested in the digital rendering of his movie, he forgot to film many scenes which would have enormously helped this surprisingly thinned-plotted film. (SPOILER) For crying out loud, they forgot to have a villain in this thing! OK they have one, but he's been dead for 20 years by the time the movie takes place. Conran misses the point of HAVING a villain. As far as action goes, well let's see, Sky Captain (Law) shoots down ONE robot, two or three of the flapping wing airplanes (before Dex (Ribisi) tells him to stop shooting them down!!!), and a couple robots, but mostly spends his time looking dashing and getting others to fight his battles for him. Paltrow as Polly or Peggy or Punky or whatever is totally wasted in this movie (the reviewer who comments on hers and Law's lack of chemistry is so right) and I for one got a little sick of seeing repeated shots of the top of her camera, showing she ONLY HAS TWO SHOTS LEFT, both of which she wastes subsequently in the movie, one uncomically, one quite funny, although I saw it coming from 70 years away. No one except Law and Paltrow have any significant time on screen, and that's the movie's real flaw. An audience doesn't identify with robots, they need a hero to root for, and a visible, despicable villain to hate. Without that, plus a good engaging story, all the CG in the world won't help. | 0 |
train_5224 | Ayone who whines about how this movie was crap or that it had no plot must have been looking for "Jean de Florrette". HELLO! this film was made to be a random act of comedy and in no way involves a plot in any way shape or form. I would also like to remind these whiners that if you are going to flay the crap out of this film that they seem to be missing the point. This film is clearly made for people who don't appreciate the so called "american humour" which seems to me just a pile of smutty crap. The point is everyone has an opinion and you should be a bit more appreciative that some peoples sense of humour may not be in line with your own before shooting your mouth off.Thankyou | 1 |
train_19154 | Usually, I don't think Hollywood productions are fit to be called film, so I call them 'movies' instead. But this piece of elephant manure, is not even fit to be called a movie, hence the quotes in the title.Where shall i start? 1. If this isn't the start of geriatric casting, it sure is the epitome of it. Stefanie Powers is supposed to play someone even LESS than half her age, she's supposed to play an 18 year old, and she is FORTY effing TWO!!!! 2. A horrible and stupid mindless portrayal of Paris and France, where we see cliché characters such as: the sympathetic grumpy shop owner, the bitchy queen of models, the fairy god mother ex-queen of models, etc. This film is surpassed only in this respect by the Da Vinci Code, (which reviewers correctly determined was a comedy). 3. It's highly and utterly ridiculous to have no nudity in a film about a time and a place where nudity was so common place, especially if the whole focus is about that4. The horrible accents!!! 5. The Nana Mouskouri elevator-music!!!I could go on, but i think this is enough. And I was able to make these observations after watching this crap for just half an hour, WHILE surfing the internet and talking to my friends about math equations ... I mean ...!!!!!I invite everyone to add to my list. :) :P :D | 0 |
train_14110 | What I found so curious about this film--I saw the full 4 hour roadshow version, is how oddly dispassionate it is. For a film about 2 very charismatic men--Castro and Che, engaged in a gargantuan political struggle, it's almost totally devoid of emotional fire. The scenes between Benicio Del Toro and Demian Bichir (who is at best a second level actor,with a slightly high pitched voice) have no drama or depth and basically come down to Castro telling Che: go here, go there, do this and that, with no explanation as to what effect or use this action will result in. Odder still is there is an actor in the cast who has the requisite power to play Castro--Joaquim de Almeida, but he's shunted aside in a minor part in the second half. Without the tension or passion that you would expect to fire these men and their followers, the film becomes a dullish epic-length film about hairy, bearded men running through various jungles shouting and shooting to no particular purpose or end. Several of the reviews I've read showered praise on the work of director Steven Soderbergh while ignoring the actors almost completely. (One in fact spent more time talking about Soderbergh's new digital film camera than the plot or actors or the fact that it's entirely in Spanish with English subtitles.)This is an odd, odd thing to do since a) Soderbergh was only a hired gun on the film and b) it's no more than a competent job of work, with an unremarked upon nod to Oliver Stone's JFK in the black and white cut up camera-work when Che visits New York. If you can imagine Reds directed by Andrew McLaglen instead of Warren Beatty, you'd get an idea of the dull competency of this movie. | 0 |
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