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There was a time when Joel Schumacher was ranked quite high on my list of favorite directors. Back in the late 80's and early 90's, when his name was attached to several great films like 'The Lost Boys', 'Flatliners' and 'Falling Down', he truly was one of the most gifted directors in Hollywood. Then came the stupid 'Batman' sequels, unfortunately, and after that it seemed as if every potentially sublime screenplay turned into a gigantic mess in Schumacher's hands. Both '8MM' and 'Phone Booth' could have been much better films and even the incredibly imbecilic concept of 'The Number 23' should have been processed into a slightly more compelling and entertaining movie. Literally from start to finish, 'The Number 23' desperately attempts to be a mysterious and uncanny thriller and therefore uses all the dreadful clichés from the big book of cinema history, including heavy-voiced narration, flashbacks, disorderly structure, characters with multiple personalities, numerous plot twists that grow increasingly absurd and sinister asylum settings. Nothing helps, however, simply due to the sheer silliness of the basic formula and the clearly uninspired engagement of cast & crew. As much as you try to associate with the lead character and be open-minded regarding the insane theories, this still remains a movie about a two-digit number and two-digit numbers aren't scary. Walter Sparrow (Jim Carrey in a rare non-comical role) is a bored animal trapper whose wife Agatha gives him a bizarre book on his birthday. The book tells about all sorts of devilish theories and strange coincidences that are linked to the number 23. Walter almost promptly identifies himself with the book's protagonist (a sleazy detective investigating a grim case of suicide) and begins to spot copious examples of the 23 enigma in his own private life. I did some research on Google and Wikipedia and, apparently, this whole 23 numerology nonsense really exists and certain people honestly believe that most catastrophes and accidents are directly connected to this evil number. Well, that's just
crazy! But hey, I'm not here to judge people's beliefs and fears, regardless of how demented they are, and I can only share my humble opinion on a movie that is based on an out-and-out berserk enigma. 'The Number 23' is not suspenseful, in spite of several gloomy set pieces and nasty make-up effects, and never at one point manages to make you contemplate about the role of numbers in your own life. All cast members perform below their normal capacities, but it was still nevertheless a joy to see the lovely Mrs. Virginia Madsen in a relatively big production again. Definitely not recommended in case you're looking for a solid and creepy evening of thriller fun, but endurable and not entirely without merit. | 1 |
Seriously, Sci-Fi needs to stop making movies. They're all horrible. And this one had John Rhys-Davies in it, and he couldn't help the movie. Dr. Pena (Giancarlo Esposito) captures the legendary goat eater of Mexico, the chupacabra, and brings it aboard a cruise ship captained by Captain Rudolf (John Rhys-Davies). The creature then escapes and starts killing crew and passengers. Captain Rudolf and the crew then go after the creature, guns ablazin'. But they can't stop it. So they call in the navy. They can't stop it either. Then the thing kills all 5 (or however many of them there are). Then the captain and his daughter along with some other guy, figure out how to kill it. Stay away from this movie. The chupacabra looks incredibly cheesy, the navy men shoot at the slightest movement,throw grenades on the ship, and the acting is horrible. 3/10. | 1 |
I was fairly lost throughout most of this film, and I am the one who usually understands the works of such enigmatic cinema greats as David Lynch (Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me) and Darren Aronofsky (Pi). Not to say that Northfork doesn't make sense on some level, it just doesn't combine to form a wholly coherent film. As time passes from watching the film, its themes and intentions become clearer, but during my initial viewing, I was really confounded, and I find that this is the major fault of the film...its lack of direction. The plot centers on the town of Northfork, Montana in the year 1955. The town has been emptied and will soon be flooded to make way for the creation of a hydro-electric dam. The major problem is that not all of its inhabitants are willing to be evacuated and relocated. A group of men are hired to coerce the remaining residents out of the town before it will be drowned, and for the most part they succeed amidst some fairly odd situations and townspeople. Simultaneously, the film tells the story of Irwin, a very sick young boy (or is he a fallen angel?) whose adopted parents gave him back, due to his illness, to the Northfork orphanage that they adopted him from. Father Harlan (Nick Nolte) cares for the dying Irwin, but Irwin imagines (or does he?!) that a group of angels (including Daryl Hannah and Anthony Edwards) have arrived in the desolate and empty town looking for a fallen angel. Irwin has scars on his back and on his head, and he tries to convince the angels that his scars are where the humans amputated his wings and halo. Oh yeah, and during all of this there is a strangely surreal walking animal on stilts that roams throughout the backdrop of the landscape. There are a lot of other small events that happen in the film, but none of them end up amounting to much more than momentary intrigue. One can appreciate the artistic quality of the film (it's obvious that the filmmakers cared deeply about this film) and its rich cinematography, but the film still tries too hard to be different and then gives up and whimpers to an end without making much of a statement. Like I wrote earlier, it becomes clearer, long after viewing, what has possibly taken place in the film. Irwin is dying, and so is Northfork, and in coping with his own loss and death, Irwin has most likely created characters, from ideas he gets from the objects that surround him at the orphanage, to console him as he is abandoned and his life nears its end. But then again, maybe he really is an angel, and he has found his kind and can now return home. I must emphasize that there are some truly beautiful moments in the film, heartbreaking, vivid and full of loneliness and sadness. Unfortunately, the film as a whole just ends up feeling disconnected and somehow incomplete. | 1 |
Drum scene is wild! Cook, Jr. is unsung hero of this and many movies. Fantastic actor, great flick. A few twists that keep you moving. A must-see. | 0 |
I saw this movie on television as SCREAMERS and loved it. I heard an interesting story about this film. When Roger Corman released it to drive-ins in the summer of 1981, his trailer department sent out an advance trailer which was not actually footage from the film. It was allegedly footage of a naked woman being chased around a laboratory set by a monster. During the film's opening at drive-in's, irate customers complained the did not see the movie they paid to see. Theater owners called Corman and said their customers felt ripped off. So Corman had to run off copies of the footage, and send the positive film to theater owners to splice into the film themselves. Since the footage was never part of the film negative, it has not appeared in any video, DVD or television broadcast. Has anyone ever seen this footage? Anyone who saw this film at a drive-in in the summer of 1981 remember this? | 0 |
'Rush in Rio' is, no doubt, one of the most exciting DVDs I have purchased. Although I am a biased Rush fan of almost 20 years, I found this performance to be flawless. The music is heavy and sharp (which sounds great on any surround sound system), the band is energetic, the crowd has a constant smile... it's like they were able to capture every concert I've been to. For any Rush fan, this DVD is a must; if anything, just to see the 'Boys in Brazil' documentary (which reveals the travels of this rather isolated, personal band). For any non-Rush fan, this DVD is an enjoyable concert. Rush fans know the talent of these three Canadians. We have rather firmly stood by them for years. I've shown this DVD (or portions of it, anyway) to those who have never heard of Rush, or those who think Rush is less than good because they do not appeal to the pessimistic masses of rock (i.e., sex, drugs, and a drunken frenzy). The bottom line is this DVD is worth every penny and more than worth the time to view it. | 0 |
This is definitely a touching movie, and a great expression of Charles Darwins personal struggle. The movie is not only about his struggle to get his book 'the origin of Species' published, but also his relationship with his oldest daughter. His daughter was at start the only person in his family to approve of his views, something that she as well had to pay for. Een more than him at times.<br /><br />Now, this is not an evolutionary propaganda film, as a matter of fact I think it managed to stay very neutral. A hard thing to do in my opinion. of course it does not condone the way the characters was treated by the church, quite the opposite actually. If you need me to use the big words to shed light on this film; it will be liked by deists and atheists alike, but goes away from theism. The movie talks about evolution, and that's it.<br /><br />Paul Bettany as Charles Darwin was incredible. Of course we all may think of Darwin as that old man with the funny beard, but this movie centers around the man in his late 20's, early 30's. Jennifer Connelly (Emma Darwin) is great as always, but the actor who impressed me was Martha West as Annie Darwin, Darwins daughter. Definitely on of the best child actors of the decade. The story is about Darwin and his daughter, and it is beautifully acted.<br /><br />Except for a few jumps in time that was momentarily confusing, the production of this film is pretty flawless. Some scenes were Darwin observes nature is just marvelous, and is almost like taken out of a high production National geographic documentary.<br /><br />I must admit though, I'm not quite sure of why they chose 'Creation' as the title. I doubt it is an irony, the movie is too respectful for that. Well, I'm sure there's a meaning too it, just don't let it scare you away. <br /><br />I give this movie a 9/10. This is truly a great tribute to Charles Darwin, and please give it a chance. | 0 |
Anyone who lived through the ages of Revenge of the Nerds and Girlpower will appreciate this film. It is one of those films that delivers everything you want in a 'spring break movie' PLUS it makes fun of the college film genre. It's funny, it's got a cast to die for (Amy Pohler! Rachel Dratch!, Sophie Monk!, Parker Posey! Jane Lynch! Amber Tamblyn! Missi Pyle!) and its guaranteed to make you laugh out loud. Writer/ actor Rachel Dratch is a comic genius and Sophie Monk is such a great villain. Wilson Phillips! OMG! (I'm just repeating myself now...) It will live on with girls who like Miranda July but feel like eating ice cream and pretending they're dumb. | 0 |
John Carradine, John Ireland, and Faith Domergue who as players all saw better days in better films got together for this Grade G horror film about life imitating art in a mysterious mansion.<br /><br />For Carradine it was in those last two decades of his career that he appeared in anything on the theory it was better to keep working no matter what you did and get those paychecks coming in. With that magnificent sonorous voice of his, Carradine was always in great demand for horror pictures and the man did not discriminate in the least in what he appeared in.<br /><br />He plays the caretaker of an old Gothic mansion who movie director John Ireland has rented for his latest low budget slasher film. It's even got a graveyard, but with a missing occupant. Faith Domergue is Ireland's aging star and Carole Wells is the young ingenue.<br /><br />In the last twenty minutes or so most of the cast winds up dead that aren't dead already. The script is so incoherent I'm still trying to figure out the point. I won't waste any more gray matter on it. | 1 |
For a series that was inspired by Kolchak, it's ironic that The X Files first attempt at a vampire episode should land squarely on it's ass. 3 has always puzzled me and - at the risk of sounding like the dreadful Hans Keller - I've often wondered if I'm missing the point. The story feels like a jigsaw that has pieces that don't match the box, and the result is you spending a cosy evening by the fire trying to match sky that is really sea. This incomplete feeling remains no matter how many times you revisit the episode and no matter how much attention you give it. I know that this review puts me in danger of being dragged to Whitby by teenage vampires who'll drink my blood while listening to Busted, but that's a risk I'm willing to take. I've always been a werewolf man myself. | 1 |
There seems to be a whole sub genre of cheap, tired old sex 'comedies' out there, that say the same old things about middle class couples. Sort of like Friends, but with more soft porn and no wit. This film is no exception- it had situations so familiar I died from deja vu. People sat on couches, spinning out clichés about sex and relationships? Check. Monogamy versus cheating with some woman/man who would never look twice in reality at some other woman/man? Check. PORN The BADDIES!!!!111? Check. Some guy/girl in it who happens to be the only reason you're watching this rubbish? Check. The lesson seems to be- when it doubt, make a tired old sex 'comedy' about people no one cares anything about, in order to make some statement that everybody has already heard three thousand times before. That'll get your film made. It'll even attract some sitcom nobody in a bad wig! | 1 |
I saw this movie because every review I read of it said that it was one of the scariest movies of the new millennium. I really don't understand what all of the hype was about. For one thing, the dialogue in this movie was laughably bad ('What if something strange is going on?'...what????). The acting didn't blow my socks off either. It could have been because the script barely gave the actors anything to work with....the characters are purely 2-dimensional to me and I didn't give a hoot about them at all. Another thing is that the movie extremely boring. Extremely. Sure, there are a couple of 'jolts' here and there, but for the movie's 112 minute length, it sure didn't use it's time up wisely. Most of the movie contains characters talking about stuff that had barely anything to do with the plot. What was the point of that??<br /><br />To top it off, the movie makes no sense. Yes, I believe I understood the intentions of the ghosts, but how that fits into the events that actually occur in the movie is beyond me. Also, much of the movie is played out in little vignettes, which makes the story hard to follow at times. And don't even get me started with the ending. What exactly happened there?<br /><br />I can give Kurosawa credit for placing some truly frightening images throughout the film. There are very creepy shots of ghosts and other unsettling images. If they reflected more on those images and elaborated on them, it would have made the movie much stronger. But they didn't, and instead elaborated more on social commentary, which was interesting, but again, portrayed in an extremely dull way. Yes, it's a message movie. Okay, fun. I'll just get the message of my review right out here in the open: find a better way to spend your spare time than watching this. | 1 |
Of course, going into it, one would expect it to be a typical, stupid T&A flick, and it is. But it really does have some fairly well thought out humorous moments. Given the era in which it was made, and the obvious exploitation aspect, it is still one of the better B comedies of the time.<br /><br />While watching this movie, you will see quite obviously the inspiration for many of the scenes in 'Revenge of The Nerds', and numerous other films of the same genre. Most of the acting is horrible, and WAY over the top, but that's exactly what I expect in a movie like this. What it lacks in the way of acting ability, it more than makes up for with its camp value and complete disregard for anything of merit.<br /><br />The amazing thing about this movie, is that there was obviously some money that went into it. Films like this made today just don't have the same style. If you can turn your brain off, and turn your sense of humor up for an hour and a half, you will enjoy this flick. I dare anyone to not find at least SOMETHING in this movie that they think is funny, if not hilarious. | 0 |
Edith Nesbitt's best book has been adapted into a truly magnificent film, I love it. The film itself has gorgeous cinematography, and fine realisation of the subject matter. The ending is enough to have you in tears, as it is so beautifully done. Lionel has directed some truly excellent films, like the Amazing Mr Blunden, but this is his best film as director by a mile. The costumes were absolutely lovely, that matched the beauty of the countryside, and the sparkling and conveniently-faithful script helped matters. However, it is the quality of the acting that holds this film together, as it is nothing shorter than incredible. Dinah Sheridan is suitably sincere as the mother, a much-needed characteristic of the character, and Bernard Cribbins was hilarious as Perks. In fact, I preferred Perks on film, as he isn't as humorous in the book. The children were perfect. Gary Warren and Sally Thomsett both gave spirited performances, but it is Jenny Agutter's enchanting portrayal of Bobbie that impressed me the most. Another special mention is the gorgeous music by Johnny Douglas, the title music reminded me of Charlie Chaplin's Smile. In conclusion, a funny and poignant masterpiece, that is better than the book, I think. 10/10. Bethany Cox. | 0 |
This remarkable film can be summed up very easily. First of all, while the comparisons to 'Princess Bride' are inevitable, it's almost futile to do so. While both films combine adult wit and humor with a fairy tale backdrop, 'Stardust' is so much different than any other fantasy/sci-fi film I've ever seen. It's such a hybrid of those genres, but its plot and script are so unique that--along with the performances, special effects, cinematography, and score--the finished product is simply not all that comparable to anything that has ever appeared on the silver screen. Secondly, the score is very effective at simultaneously pulling us into the story and the fantasy world in which it takes place and pushing the story along, while creating just the right amount of awe and excitement necessary to make the magic believable within the realm where the characters exist. Thirdly, I did not find the film to be even remotely difficult to follow or confusing in any way. In fact, the interesting interplay between the three main subplots actually made it even that much more compelling to watch. Wonderfully casted, and superbly acted across the board. This fantasy adventure (with sci-fi elements) was the best one I've seen since 'Return of the King' (not that I am comparing the two at all). OK, so its not that easy to sum up, but don't let any crude and/or heartless and cynical review nor the film's pathetic PR prevent you from partaking in the best time you could have at the movies this summer (or even possibly in a long time)! | 0 |
'This Is Not A Love Song' is a brilliant example of the chase genre, which many people think has an underlying meaning. The love between the two main characters may be more than fraternal. I believe that Heaton is in love with Spike, but Spike is too naive to see this.<br /><br />I really feel this is portrayed with such scenes as the blow back and letter writing sequences. Heaton shows great intimacy towards Spike. With intense facial expressions and how he takes great care in writing Spike's name on the top of his letters.<br /><br />One thing I've noticed when looking at external reviews, is that when the film has been slated, the reviewer seems to have not fully understood the film, as they haven't even mentioned the possibility of Heaton having sexual feelings for Spike. I also get the feeling that some of the reviewers haven't recognised it, when they use phrases like: 'Who is Heaton? What's he doing with a retard like Spike?' This person, however may have hit the nail on the head with their remark. Spike shows noticeable signs of having A.D.D, although I don't think this person has realised this, as he seems to be using the word 'retard' as a derogatory term.<br /><br />I really enjoyed this film. Although it is not for the faint hearted. The film is exceedingly character based, after the shooting until the end there isn't much but dialogue between the two anti-heroes. Unless you are used to watching such deep, gritty films, stay well away. | 0 |
I've seen about 820 movies released between 1931-39, and THE INFORMER is the worst major release I've seen from that time span. Awful, despicable, unpleasant, unhappy, unredeemable saga of a complete Loser. Watch a 1934 B Western instead. | 1 |
Every once in a while you stumble across a movie that takes you by surprise and this is one of them. On the surprise scale this would rate as sharing a hot tub with Jessica Alba whilst a band consisting of Elvis, Jimi Hendrix, John Lennon, Phil Lynott and Keith Moon play you music for the night. The reason why this film will surprise you is that for the meagre budget they had (£8,000) and that this was done by a bunch of mates who just wanted to try it out they have produced something very slick and looks easily 100 times more than its budget.<br /><br />The plot is simple a crew of mercenaries carrying a dangerous prisoner through space come under attack and are forced to crash land on a nearby desolate planet. After some checks not only does the planet not exist according to star charts but they are not alone as it seems and something very unfriendly begins to pick them of one by one. It sounds like very standard Sci-Fi fare mixing elements of Aliens. Predator and Pitch Black but it takes all these and makes them into something that feels fresh and original.<br /><br />The Location shooting in this is fantastic, utilising Balmeddie beach in Aberdeen to the maximum and you genuinely feel that you are one an alien world. The seemingly never ending sand dunes and clever lighting effects give it a very bleak feel , you truly think the crew are stranded on an alien world. Also the action sequences are superb, the opening assault on the freighter a great showcase of what special effects can be achieved on a budget and the firefights as well as the stunning finale all showcase the inventiveness of the film.<br /><br />As for the team of mercenaries the cast excels themselves. For a low budget independent movie the casting here was done via local media outlets and they seem to have picked some possible stars for the future. Local body builder Mike Mitchell whilst not a natural actor slots into his role as the Arnie-Esq leader of the mercenaries. From the rest of the cast there are two stand out performances Patrick Wright as second in command McNeal and Scott Ironside as the rough and ready engineer Vince. Both have some the best lines in the movie and Scott injects a good bit of humour into the movie with his performance. Patrick gives a well rounded performance as the cool as ice second in command.<br /><br />Director Mark Stirton can be very proud of what he has achieved and shows that Scottish cinema need not all be 'Kilts and Ceilidhs' or 'Slums and Drugs' Scottish films can be fresh, inventive and most of all a lot of god damn fun. This film is Scottish (with a north east flavour) to the core and praise to the actors and directors for keeping the accents intact which adds to the charm of the piece. Although the budget limitations show from time to time (the only fault i could find) that is to be expected. This film, its cast and crew deserve all the success they get and then some more. I for one wish Mark and his crew every success and theirs is a career to keep a very close eye on.<br /><br />Rating - 9/10 The first Scottish sci-fi is bold, fresh and inventive a real triumph.<br /><br />Movie reviews, news and opinion like no other plus the kick ass bi-weekly pod-casts.<br /><br />www.fightrunner.co.uk <br /><br />[email protected] | 0 |
Though this movie is cheesiness at its best, it is pulled off perfectly. This movie, without a doubt, has to be considered a modern classic. There are basically two kinds of movies I like - movies with depth (chick flicks, if you must - I blame my wife for this) and mindless comedies where I can sit back and relax. This movie is a perfect example of the latter.<br /><br />A friend of mine turned me on to this movie shortly after its release. Considering me to somewhat shallow, he said to me, 'You've got to see this movie. It's just your type of movie.' Foregoing the insult, I started watching. I know they mentioned The Ramones a million times, but when you actually see them, I said, 'Hey, it is The Ramones.' My friend replied, 'I don't know they were a real band.' I had my moment of glory.<br /><br />This movie, though now somewhat dated, is a must see for Ramones fans - or anyone else for that matter. | 0 |
Do not miss this picture that defies ages. With no hesitation, a masterpiece. Not only the script and the music but also choregraphy, casting,<br /><br />cut : everything contributes to the perfect achievement. Now nearly 25 years ago and still amazing of maturity, art and<br /><br />sensitivity. Available now in DVD, do not miss either. The transfert is perfect<br /><br />and the sound re-boosted. One mystery remains about this superb work : why the actors did<br /><br />not succeed better after this flashing start ? | 0 |
I am a huge Charlton Heston fan. He is without a doubt one of the greatest actors of all time, but what was he thinking when he made this movie. Normally if he made a bad movie I could blame it on the screenwriter or director, but in this case it's all him. The suckiness of this movie is all his fault. It proves that not even Heston can make a Shakespeare story interesting. I wasted 2 and a half hours of my life on this snooze fest and I'll never get that time back. This is by far THE WORST Heston movie that I've ever seen. If you are a Shakespeare fan maybe you'll find this movie entertaining, but if you're not don't waste your time, you'll regret it in the long run. | 1 |
one word boring.<br /><br />the young demi looks good, but she's pregnant (- point for that =D) the movie is not scary at all...<br /><br />the first scenes looked little crappy, i could render better clouds with my laptop, and after effects. but that was then... and now is now. some movies do not get old well... this is one of them.<br /><br />not worth renting or buying... get something better instead like the exorcist, ...<br /><br />next =D<br /><br />oh the drama part in the beginning just and simply suxor =D | 1 |
The year 1950 saw two very different and interesting westerns: 'The Gunfighter' by Henry King, and 'Wagon Master' by John Ford. 'The Gunfighter' was historically notable as it clearly influenced Zimmerman's 'High Noon' (1951) and later revisionist westerns.<br /><br />However, I personally find 'Wagon Master' superior to it's contemporary counterpart. Ford's minor masterpiece isn't much about storytelling; it should be conceived more as a poem describing conceptions of old west. Although optimistic and warm at heart, we are deserved from naivety because it's completely free from pretentious underscoring. Frontier scenery is well used as it supports the poetic narrative perfectly. Add naturalistic camera work and we are transported among the mormon travellers to witness western folklore told in cinematic means. | 0 |
This movie is the best film ever. I can't remember the last time a movie has drawn tears out of me. with a tear in my eye, I admire this movie. It has all the elements that a good movie must have: Excellent Dialogues, Music, Acting, Story/Plot. A story of friendship, courage, kindliness and loyalty between a Street performing who famous to The King of Masks and a little girl that sold as a boy in serf bazaar. Little girl liked to be his granddaughter and King of Masks liked a grandson. They were not conventional in real. Every scene they were together was priceless. The camera work is flawless and grips you. The acting is inspired. Xu Zhu was Excellent as The King of Masks. Renying Zhou 'Doggie' looks pretty and played her character very well. Zhigang Zhao as Liang Sao Lang was great. He played his helpful and kindhearted character extremely well. If you have't this movie, try it once, Do watch it. | 0 |
The movie is okay, it has it's moments, the music scenes are the best of all! The soundtrack is a true classic. It's a perfect album, it starts out with Let's Go Crazy(appropriate for the beginning as it's a great party song and very up-tempo), Take Me With U(a fun pop song...), The Beautiful Ones(a cheerful ballad, probably the closest thing to R&B on this whole album), Computer Blue(a somewhat angry anthem towards Appolonia), Darling Nikki(one of the funniest songs ever, it very vaguely makes fun of Appolonia), When Doves Cry(the climax to this masterpiece), I Would Die 4 U, Baby I'm A Star, and, of course, Purple Rain(a true classic, a very appropriate ending for this classic album) The movie and the album are both very good. I highly recommend them! | 0 |
This proved to be a rare case of a poliziottesco made with British funding; unfortunately, the result is undistinguished (except by its exceeding unpleasantness and borderline-camp approach) despite stars and director. The former is led by a wooden Franco Nero and an ultra-hammy Telly Savalas as a couple of would-be robbers (if anyone is able to believe either actor who generally exude cool as a duo of bumbling crooks, he's more gullible than I am!).<br /><br />Their 'job' goes awry (ending in murder and saddled with cases of cutlery instead of jewels!) however, the mismatched criminals see an opening to their dilemma when they inadvertently 'kidnap' the son of a British diplomat (a miscast Lester, who even gets to kick trigger-happy Savalas where it hurts at one point). Still, they never actually ransom him and their sole intent is to cross the border into France; tagging along with them is Nero's girlfriend (a wasted Ely Galleani): soon enough, though, she's had enough and decides to run away while the others are sleeping; the crazy Savalas notices this and, following the girl, kills her. In the meantime, Nero and Lester have woken up the former thinks his accomplices may have double-crossed him, so he goes on the lam with the boy in tow; after a brief spell at a rich old lady's country estate (which features totally gratuitous rear nudes by both Nero and Lester!), Savalas catches up with them. They continue their trek, where the trio run into a family of German campers: the situation degenerates to the point where Savalas shuts them inside their trailer and tosses the lot into the river though he's badly hurt in the process himself; typically, it all ends with the 'heavies' getting killed just as they're about to reach the border.<br /><br />The film, therefore, contains most of the genre's typical elements sleaze, sadism, violence, chases (the aftermath of the opening robbery when the getaway car causes havoc in the city's narrow back-streets and even disrupts a funeral procession is downright farcical), etc.; one mildly interesting aspect to it is that, by the end, Lester himself is seen to have been definitely (irrevocably?) marked by the experience coming to feel excitement when an act of violence is committed. | 1 |
I guess this is the first time I have seen a Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle movie. I really liked him in his (title) role as a butcher boy. The way he moves is very funny in my opinion, for example how he handles his knife and the way he rolls a cigarette. I think he is a good actor; his facial expressions really suit the role he plays, for example how he winks at the audience in the end. But one might add that that was probably not too difficult. Anyway I think he would have deserved a longer career. As you probably know it was ruined by greedy journalists who made money by printing false accusations that said he was involved in a scandal.<br /><br />The plot is not very important. In the first half, Fatty and Alum are employees at a store and rivals for Almondine's affection. After a heavy food fight, Almondine is sent to a girls' school by her father, the store owner. (This is the beginning of the second half). Both Fatty and Alum enter the school in drag, and the fight for Almondine continues. (Some of the characters' names are different in the version that I have seen. It seems that for some reason they replaced the original title cards with new ones.)<br /><br />There are a lot of corny gags like food fights and pratfalls, but they are done well in my opinion. And there are some gags I really liked, for example how they make the dog run the pepper mill (or is it a coffee mill?), or the scene when Fatty dons a coat although it is obviously not necessary, or when Miss Teachem, the head of the girls' school, spanks Fatty, and he spanks her back.<br /><br />Buster Keaton is also funny in this, his first, movie; a good addition to the cast. In the first half he is a customer at the store, in the second half he supports Alum in his fight for Almondine. I liked his acrobatics, for example when Fatty pushes him from one room of the school to another, he doesn't show a simple pratfall but lands on his hands and his head and does a little pirouette. Watch out for one scene in the food fight: Alum throws a flour bag at him, but it misses and hits the store owner instead. That makes Buster laugh, which must be a rarity since he normally always shows a neutral expression (which - as you probably also know already - got him the nickname 'The Great Stone Face'). (One more note: Al St. John, who plays Alum, was 'Fatty' Arbuckle's nephew, and later became famous for the role of 'Fuzzy' that he played in lots of westerns.)<br /><br />I don't like this one as much as I like, for example, 'One Week' and 'The Balloonatic' (films that Buster made later, without 'Fatty'). And it didn't make me laugh out loud often - but it made me smile a lot, so I have given it eight points. | 0 |
I went to see this film over Matchstick Men, in fact buying the tickets to Matchstick Men and going to the other, because it looked like a fun movie with action, romance, thrills, jungles, and exotic locations. They had all that but so do a lot of movies with a conception of story.<br /><br />All I can say is WHY WHY WHY WHY did they not just make it a straight narrative instead of some sappy flashback story.<br /><br />Here is all the movies from what I've seen the film was derived from: Of course, Indiana Jones and Romancing the Stone, but also True Lies, Proof of Life, that old 80s Tom Selleck movie, Bananas (Woody Allen), and Hero (from the use of digital extras).<br /><br />PS the only scene in the movie that was cool is when the central character finds her room blown up. | 1 |
If you can imagine Mickey Mouse as a New York street pimp, or John Wayne as a Communist spy, then you might believe Pat Boone as a juvenile delinquent on his uncle's farm in Kentucky and you could conceivably enjoy this movie.<br /><br />This film is so stupid that it isn't even campy for a mid 1950s sexless love story. And the problem is that Hollywood made such a big deal about Pat Boone's refusal to kiss a woman not his wife on screen before its release that the audience knows he won't kiss Shirley Jones so you cannot build any anticipation for the 'screen consummation' of their love. It's sort of like watching a western in which the cowboys don't have guns.<br /><br />The story is pointless. Even the title song is sung with pained enthusiasm.<br /><br />April Love belongs in the worst film bargain bin along with Ishtar and Plan 9 from Outer Space. | 1 |
Wow, after trashing the disk of Timo Roses 'Rout City' after about 15 Minutes (South Park is about more than meaningless cursing... I guess some people just don't get it) I was interested in this movie. I read quite some positive stuff and the packaging and look of the movie seemed far from the total trash I expected after 'Rout city'.<br /><br />Surprise: The movie isn't total trash but the problem seems to be exactly that. Timo Rose tries to walk in the footsteps of German Horror/Splatter Cinema like Olaf Ittenbach and the likes. That means 'Barricade' is in parts extremely gory and detailed. The gore FX are not really believable but OK, the acting is OK but in some cases plain sucks. The hillbilly chick in the opening sequence is ridiculous and doesn't get better till she's shot.<br /><br />So what is the problem... the movie is gory, has a typical German underground vibe (including the classic booby shots in blood), OK FX and a modern feel to it like the packaging already promised?! <br /><br />1. The script is total BS. You get a typical hillbilly/lost in the woods story with some guys+gal camping out and meeting a degenerated hillbilly family. Everything is just leading towards the torture/mutilation scenes and seems unbelievably random and pointless. This is the first thing that makes 'Barricade' half-hearted.<br /><br />2. Random is also the perfect description for a lot of the camera work (I liked the repetitive cut to the tweezers in the extended booby torture scene... either they had no material or the editor works in a hardware store). Even worse the editing... sure, its modern and far better than a lot of other movies in the genre but its RANDOM. You got an overuse of that typical exposure effect everywhere and with no meaning ... its just there... all the time. Then there's some grainy/noisy film look which also is just thrown in here and there for the sake of it, I don't get the meaning.<br /><br />3. Like the fore-mentioned effects there is a lot of repetitive stuff in here. For example most of the kills are edited with multiple repetitions of stabbing and punching. Its OK once but here its annoying and fake, especially towards the end. Annoying also attributes the 'music' which is permanently used without any change in the background. It doesn't take long until it makes the movie hardly bearable.<br /><br />4. From all this comes the biggest problem of this movie (and many others in my opinion). If you make a splatter movie with trashy feel its pretty idiotic to polish it with special FX and new school editing. It looks like they take it way too serious. Its no fun because the decent gore FX are plain wasted in this context. And where the classic gore FX are OK the computer FX in scenes like the stabbing in the mouth or the gunshots in the ending look rather silly(and 3D splatter mostly sucks to me even in movies with a budget and decent 3D artists).<br /><br />I often wondered if the time of serious splatter movies is over and 'Barricade' is just another example it might be time to put it in the tomb. Its no fun, has no character and is too trashy for its look. The script is a cheap try on 'Wrong Turn' and 'TCM' leading absolutely nowhere. You can take that literally... the ending is just there and as random as many other things here ('I love you' in a splatter flick... come on!!). 'Barricade' tries to incorporate a lot and fails...you can sure fast-forward through this movie for some extensive disembowelment, acid face melting,nipple pinching and classic Friday the 13th style stabbing of a couple while fingering in a tent (bloody boobies hooray!). But its really hard to get through this. Total failure especially because you can see it could have been something. | 1 |
I first saw this movie around 1968 and if I don't see it once or twice a year, I'm surprised. I've always found it engrossing, well acted, and, for Hollywood, surprisingly accurate historically. I heartily give it 10 stars and recommend it highly! | 0 |
i have rated this movie a 1/10 and have done this in good nature. this movie is not as it seems and i don;t get the point of it. take the first joke for instance. Their's that sign at the beginning to start. well that was OK but then they start having some guy talking about the hood and then he dies then theirs the other guys who talks then he dies after the other guy says people don;t get to their birthday with out dieing. and he gets a cake now. then he dies. <br /><br />The jokes are just stupid they are;t that smart and i would have thought they would have been better from some one like the directors of scary movie:<br /><br />Shawn Wayans (written by) & Marlon Wayans (written by) & Phil Beauman (written by)<br /><br />but it sucked and i hop next time they want to make another comedy they make some good jokes not lame ones. | 1 |
If it were possible to award a 10+ .... this would be the one film I would choose.<br /><br />I remember catching this film on TV many, many years ago - and fortunately being prepared enough to video it. Now my video copy is getting old, video technology is outdated and I'm starting to worry that I may not be able to enjoy the delights of this movie for much longer.<br /><br />As a wildlife film it is superb. As a film about the relationship between man and nature it surpasses anything screened before or since. How can the film industry allow such a classic to go unnoticed and forgotten? If such a thing as a lobby/pressure group exists to push for the re-release of this film, count me in and send me the details pronto.<br /><br />My guess is there's a mint to be made by anyone able to re-release this in today's market. | 0 |
Men In Black 2 was a real disappointment for me. While the actors did a pretty good job, especially Smith, there just isn't a cure for a poor script once in production. The movie really had a 'sequel' kind of feel, playing off partial events of the first film. The story was, in a word... bad, at best. It wasn't thought out well, and seemed very choppy and incoherent at times.<br /><br />In the first flick, the MIB Organization had a kind of 'elite' force feel. You had a few special agents, and it had a 'clandestine' kind of feel to it. In the sequel, the MIB Organization has a JROTC Summer Camp vibe.<br /><br />The movie wasn't terrible or anything.. it just lacked the 'coolness' (for lack of a better phrase) of the first movie. A lot of the same old humor was recycled from the first to the second, and didn't really add any originality to the MIB Universe.<br /><br />A perfect analogy would be Episode 1 to the first 3 films. Was it decent? Yeah. Is it worthy of bearing it's title? Not really. | 1 |
So Seagal plays a DEA detective named John Hatcher who lost his partner on a drug investigation into, surprise surprise, Colombia! Not to brag or anything, but my father was born and raised in Colombia (hence my last name), and now he's a doctor in California, so no matter what the movies would have you believe, there are some things other than drug dealers and cocaine that come out of Colombia!<br /><br />At any rate, in a drug bust gone bad, Hatcher loses his partner and accidentally kills a naked Colombian prostitute, inspiring him to go to confession, somewhere that I have never seen him go before in any of his movies, before or since. It was actually pretty interesting. Seagal has a tendency to come off as almost asexual the way he never gets much involved with women other than as a plot device and the way the occasional seduction attempt, whether by a stripper or by a lover, never piques the slightest bit of interest from him. He's all get-the- bad-guys all the time. <br /><br />But in the confession booth, he confesses to having lied, sold drugs, falsified evidence, and even slept with informants in order to get the information he needed to put the bad guys behind bars (I hope I'm not getting in trouble with God by telling you this
). The priest tells him to go to his family, so he decides it's time to retire from the force. <br /><br />The next third of the movie is an exercise in the paper-thin characterization characteristic of Seagal's films. Marked For Death is the story of Seagal against a band of mystic Jamaican drug dealers, and these guys have no discretions about pushing their products in broad daylight.<br /><br />Hatcher goes back to visit his old high school coach, Max (a minimal effort by Keith David), and right in the middle of practice there are some of these dread-locked crackheads sitting right there in the bleachers peddling crack to some bookworm-looking high school girls.<br /><br />Maybe I just had a sheltered experience in high school, but I didn't know crack dealers and crackheads hung out AT SCHOOL in the MIDDLE OF THE DAY. At any rate, it's not long before Hatcher learns how evil these guys are. They're not just peddling crack to high school kids, but the coach has been losing football players regularly to their drugs, they engage in smartass stare-downs with Max, and since that's not enough, his 13-year-old niece died in their crackhouse.<br /><br />Ah, OK. We get the picture. I'm sure they also torture puppies and beat up old women, and maybe steal candy from children too, just for good measure. Is it really this hard to establish who the bad guys are? 13-year-old niece died in their crackhouse. Wow.<br /><br />Anyway. Not only does the movie not know how to develop villains without resorting to what basically boils down to movie name-calling, where evil deeds are shallowly assigned to them through dialogue, but they also don't know how they should act. <br /><br />The leader of the drug dealers, is named Screwface, and I suppose that alone should tell you something about the kind of movie this is. Screwface is a cartoonish Jamaican man with these bright, bizarrely green eyes, which I am guess must be an important part of his character because he spends a good majority of his screen time with his eyes half bulging out of his head. His favorite means of intimidation is to scream really loud in his wildly overblown Jamaican accent with his face quite literally less than an inch away from whoever he's yelling at. This guy likes to get so into guys' faces that he has to turn his head to the side so their noses don't touch. All I could think about was how the poor guys would deal with his breath.<br /><br />Man, they do not want you to forget that these guys are Jamaican, by the way. Their accents are so exaggerated and overblown that for most of the movie it's nearly impossible to understand them. Not that it matters. It doesn't matter what they're saying, all you need to know is that everything that comes out of their mouths is some kind of evil drug-related thing, they're just the psychos that peddle drugs and kill people. The movie must have been a huge hit in Jamaica!<br /><br />My biggest problem with the movie is that the theatrics, particularly of the bad guys, as I've described, are spectacularly goofy, even for a Seagal film. They are so cartoonish and weird that it's impossible to take them as anything other than a goofball b-movie creation, something slapped together to provide fodder to whom Seagal can distribute his characteristic brand of smack-down retribution. <br /><br />But there is also a bizarre kind of mysticism in the movie that just makes it all come off as weird. For example, a mystic, I guess you would call her, at one point puts some kind of curse on Screwface by (if I remember correctly) spitting mouthfuls of Bacardi onto a live rooster that's hanging upside down before beheading it and dripping its blood onto a picture of Screwface. Hmm. Interesting. <br /><br />Sadly, it's this same woman that warns Hatcher that his family has been 'marked for death' by these people, meaning they've got some voodoo hex on them. Not to belittle anyone, but if I was told that my family had been cursed by people like that, I would just laugh at it. Hatcher doesn't strike me as the kind of guy to take much stock in freaky voodoo curses! <br /><br />But the set-up, as you can see, is pretty standard for a Seagal film. Unique villains, I guess you could say, although not very impressive. Definitely the weirdest film of Seagal's early career
| 1 |
This is the kind of movie i fear the most. Arrogant and Irresponsible, it presents a sketch of the colombian conflict so cliched and dumb it represents an insult to all Colombian people. The performances are godawul, from Grisales (her naked scene is absolutely pitiful), to Bejarano, to Fanny Mickey (who looks right out of a Tim Burton nightmare), to Díaz, who makes a notable effort to bring life to a character so one-dimensional, so cliched and so badly written all he´s left to work with is a mustache. Not to mention the gratuitous ending, a gore fest so cheesy that it would make Ed Wood cringe. It fails in all ways, cinematography, art direction, costumes, makeup, editing, and most of all directing, Jorge Alí Triana has always been a lousy filmmaker but at least his previous movies had some dignity. I can't say anything good about this waste of money, except that i hope Colombian filmmakers learn a lesson about honesty, integrity and responsability from this mean-intended fiasco. | 1 |
It was the Sixties, and anyone with long hair and a hip, distant attitude could get money to make a movie. That's how Michael Sarne, director of this colossal flop, was able to get the job. Sarne is one of the most supremely untalented people ever given a dollar to make a movie. In fact, the whole studio must have been tricked into agreeing to hire a guy who had made exactly one previous film, a terribly precious 60's-hip black and white featurette called Joanna. That film starred the similarly talentless actress/waif Genevieve Waite who could barely speak an entire line without breaking into some inappropriate facial expression or bat-like twitter. Sarne, who was probably incapable of directing a cartoon, never mind a big-budget Hollywood film, was in way over his head. David Giler's book is the best place to go to find out how the faux-infant terrible Sarne was able to pull the wool over everyone's eyes. If there is ever an historical marker which indicates the superficiality and shallowness of an era, Myra Breckinridge provides that marker. It embodies the emptiness and mindless excess of a decade which is more often remembered for a great sea-change in the body politic. Breckinridge is a touchstone of another, equally important vein. Watch this movie and you'll get a different perspective on the less-often mentioned vacuity of spirit which so often passed for talent during those years.<br /><br />Many reviewers have spoken about the inter-cutting of footage from other films, especially older ones. Some actually liked these clunky 'comments' on what was taking place in the movie, others found them senseless, annoying, and obtrusive, though since the film is so bad itself any intrusion would have to be an improvement. <br /><br />In my opinion, the real reason Michael Sarne put so many film clips into Myra Brekinridge was to paper over the bottomless insufficiency of wit and imagination that he possessed. That is to say, Sarne was so imagination-challenged that he just threw these clips in to fill space and take up time. They weren't inspiration, they were desperation. His writing skills were nonexistent, and David Giler had wisely stepped away from the project as one might from a ticking bomb, so Sarne was left to actually try and make a movie, and he couldn't. It was beyond his slim capabilities. Hence the introduction of what seems like one half of an entire film's worth of clips. The ghosts of writers and directors - many long since passed on - were called upon to fix this calamitous flopperoo because Sarne sure as heck wasn't able to. This was what he came up with on those days he sat on the set and thought for eight hours while the entire cast and crew (not to mention the producers and the accountants) cooled their heels and waited for something, some great spark of imagination, a hint of originality, a soupcon of wit, to crackle forth from the brow of Zeus. Um, oops. No Zeus + no imagination + no sparks = millions of little dollar bills with tiny wings - each made from the hundreds of licensing agreements required to use the clips - flying out the window. Bye-bye. <br /><br />As for myself, I hated the film clips. They denigrated Sarne's many betters, poked fun at people whose talents - even those whose skills were not great - far outstripped the abilities of the director and so ultimately served to show how lacking he was in inspiration, originality - and even of plain competency - compared to even the cheesiest of them. | 1 |
First of all, really Kim Basinger? Your rich banker husband leaves you alone in your beautiful, most likely paid in cash for home, and you can't even put on a decent shirt? I'm a woman, and yes, I'm going to come right out say it--clean something, starting with your hair. And while you're at it, it's Christmas Eve. Buy your kids some presents...or at least a Christmas tree. Don't drive 40 minutes to the crowded mall, park your car 3 miles away and cry about it the whole walk in, and simply buy wrapping paper. Also, the next time you decide to leave someone a nasty note, don't sign your name. I refuse to feel sorry for Della. Obviously, due to the fact that Kim Basinger is this masterpiece's executive producer, she wants you to feel bad for the poor white blond woman. We get it. Alec Baldwin is a jerk, but seriously, don't model horrible films after your own life. Also, you're in you 50s. You definitely wouldn't have 8 year old twins. AND THOSE NAMES? Terry and Tammy. Way to let your kids grow up with any decent chance of ever respecting themselves. It's also pretty fantastic to hear the characters in the film constantly call her beautiful or refer to her as a 'girl'...obviously Ms. Basinger had some say about what goes in the script. It's also pretty awesome how none of the criminals can fight back. Apparently, Della's magical ninja skills are impossible to beat. Her driving skills are pretty nifty too. This film is so cliché, it hurts. Wahhhhh! They spelled your name wrong on the tea cup. Or your husband put a hole in the wall but all you can think about is buying nail polish when you're at the mall instead of maybe some plaster and paint. Or the woman you went to high school with bought the teddy you were looking at. Boohooo! The fact that she refuses to take off that BRIGHT trench coat while running through the woods screaming and breaking everything in her path proves my point--this woman is a moron. Who thinks to grab the toolbox out of the car, but not their purse, full of identifying artifacts such as your ADDRESS. I have never wanted the 'bad guys' to succeed as much as when I watched this film. And did anyone else happen to catch the 'African American' shirt the black guy was sporting? Oh yes, rewind and feast your eyes on perhaps the most racially stereotypical prop in a film yet. Don't waste and hour and twenty minutes of your life. Instead, go do what Della couldn't figure out how to do...take care of your kids, and maybe brush your hair. That powerful ballad at the end though was pretty impressive. Singing 'I'll Be Home For Christmas' in the rain while your bloody arm clings oh so tightly to your wrapping paper is about as emotional as it gets. Thanks Della! | 1 |
a very mediocre film based on a superb series of stories and novels. I hope Somebody, someday will be able to film it the right way. In the meantime, look for the books (by A. Sapkowski), a very inteligent, postmodern fantasy. By now there should be a translation in english, there translations in german for sure. | 1 |
For Daniel Auteuil, `Queen Margot' was much better. For Nastassja Kinski, `Paris, Texas' was much better. The biggest disappointments were from Chris Menges (`CrissCross' and `A World Apart' cannot even be compared with this one), and Goran Bregovic for use of a version of the same musical theme from `Queen Margot' for this movie (Attention to the end of the film). If this was an American pop movie, I would not feel surprised at all; but for a European film with more independent actors and director, a similar common approach about child abuse with no original insight is very simple-minded and disappointing. There are those bad guys who kidnap and sell the underage people. There are those poor children who hate people selling them and wait to be saved by someone. And finally, there is that big hero who kills all the bad guys and saves these poor children from bad guys. Every character is shown in simple black and white terms: the good versus the evil. Plus, from the very beginning, I could understand how the story would end. Is this the end of the history of child sexual abuse? I believe that the difficult issue of child molestation and paedophilia is much more complex than how it is portrayed in this not very original movie. I think this movie was not disturbing, but very disappointing. | 1 |
It pains me to write such a scathing review but by not doing so I'm simply encouraging these people. First off, just because a film is made on a small budget does not automatically make it good nor endearing. In fact in this case, the small budget is probably the films sole achievement in that it prevented large sums of money from being squandered on a one legged race horse with the shits. Have you ever seen a comedy at the theatre? Ever heard people laugh and thought 'what the dickens are you on'? Well even these twats weren't laughing. Things got so bad by mid way my cat took his first ever bath. This is not film, this is children....no monkeys making images that leave you feeling like moving to France. Got to go, there's a clown at my door............. | 1 |
The subject is certainly compelling: a group of people take their love of gaming one step further by creating a fake medieval world full of warriors, kings, princes and castles. Wargaming is an interesting phenomena that delves into our collective need to 'escape' from reality and the sometimes mundaneness of our existence -- something almost everyone can relate to. The characters are the predictable mix of Lord of the Rings nerds and Star Trek enthusiasts. That's enough to get most people to watch. However, very quickly the film turns into an insider's view of wargaming with an almost stereotypical thumbing of the nose to viewers who 'don't get it'. The filmmakers seem to take the subject of wargaming, and this particular one, waaaaay too seriously rather than once in awhile recognizing the humor and fun in making a film about adults drssing up in medieval gear and pounding each other with foam swords. It's pretty hard for anyone who doesn't sit on their computer for 7-10 hours a day playing games or desiging the latest star destroyer to understand what the characters are talking about and why we should even care. However, the filmmakers themselves seem not to care choosing to focus solely on the subject of the game itself rather than building a strong narrative with a clear story that anyone can understand. Moreover, the characters themselves are not that compelling and you quickly become bored of them: a big no-no when you're trying to keep people's attention for 90 minutes. | 1 |
China White (1989) was Ronny Yu's first international film. This U.K,/Holland/Hong Kong production was shot in English and was slightly edited for the western audience. The American Wong brothers (Michael and Russell) were supposed to star in the film together but due to prior commitments was unavailable so another western actor Steven Leigh took his spot. Several Hong Kong stars such as Tommy Wong (playing a mute) and the always creepy William Ho appear as well as the director in an interesting cameo spot.<br /><br />The Chow brothers are in Holland to run the family business. They want to the family business to go legit but the other Asian gangs don't want to and see there move as a face saving move to please the 'foreigners' and want to keep on making money the old fashion way. Others want to take their business to even a new low by smuggling drugs and what not. After the Chow elder is gunned down in cold blood, the brothers make their move against any family who's not with them. Can the Chow family keep the families from killing one another or while the streets of Holland flow with the blood of the innocence and gangsters?<br /><br />A highly underrated movie. I was surprised by how good it was. I haven't seen the Hong Kong version. That would be a huge treat for me. It's longer and has a lot more stars of the Hong Kong Cinema involved with the production. Too bad this film isn't available on D.V.D. The video print i saw was washed out and the sound reproduction wasn't that great.<br /><br />Highly recommended for action fans.<br /><br />factoid: This film takes place before the decriminalization of drugs <br /><br />in Holland. | 0 |
You have to be awfully patient to sit through a film with one-liners so flat and unfunny that you wonder what all the fuss was about when WHISTLING IN THE DARK opened to such an enthusiastic greeting from audiences in the 1940s.<br /><br />On top of some weak one-liners and ordinary sight gags, the plot is as far-fetched as the tales The Fox (Red Skelton) tells his radio audience. You have to wonder why anyone would think he could come up with a real-life solution on how to commit the perfect crime and get away with it. But then, that's how unrealistic the comedy is.<br /><br />But--if you're a true Red Skelton fan and enjoy a look back at how comedies were made in the '40s--you can at least enjoy the amiable cast supporting him. Ann Rutherford and Virginia Grey do nicely as his love interest and Conrad Veidt, as always, makes an interesting villain. One of his more amusing moments is his reaction to Skelton explaining the mysteries of wearing turbans. 'I never knew that,' he muses, impressed by a minor point that is cleverly introduced.<br /><br />All in all, typical nonsense that requires you to accept the lack of credibility and just accept the gags as they are. Not always easy for a discriminating viewer as many of them simply fall flat, the way many comedies of this era do because the novelty of the sight gags and one-liners has simply worn off. | 0 |
Golden Boy is in my opinion one the sleeper / lost treasures animes out there. A sexy comedy, about a young man quest to find his nitch in life and he blunders into all sort of odd jobs that somehow has this rather sexy girl who ultimately falls for him but he not really realizing it! Its truly something that you can easily miss if you at the name, but once viewing it...will fall for the comedy/silliness that lies inside. Truly a crime that only produced 6 OVA episodes and pilot movie were made. However, being unique as it is. I'm surprised it survived to produce that many. If you want a good laugh, with high quality anime that is (100% CGI free), check this anime out. Boy who one day may save the world....or maybe not. | 0 |
I have seen a lot of PPV's in the past but this is the most entertaining, intense PPV and the most complete DVD i have ever seen. The DVD extras are worth it because they it gives a different view of how the wrestlers act after the show (such as the chris benoit interview/edge interview), some glimpse into the Monday Night Wars era,the first match of Hogan winning tag title gold and some promotional talk. Additionally there is a good music video.<br /><br />1. Tag Team Table match: Bubby Ray and Spike Dudley vs. Eddie Guerro and Chris benoit 7/10 This was a pretty good intense match to start off the show. Not too many holds and just pure raw physicallity. Spike can hold his own in tables matches and Guerro and Benoit gave good pure wrestling skills on the mat. <br /><br />2. WWE Crusierweight championship: Jamie Noble w/ Nidia v. Billy Kidman 3/10 The crowd really didn't care about either wrestler and didn't get interested until Kidman did a shooting star press. Usually people expect a lot of high flying in a cruiser weight championship, but this had very little. In fact it was so bad that when Noble hit his finisher, no one even cared or knew (you can tell by the lack of camera's flashing). The ending was quick though. <br /><br />3. WWE European Championship: Jeff hardy v. William Regal 5/10 I've never really liked regal as a wrestler, he lacks intensity and style. Hardy was impressive but really didn't get a chance to show off his high flying act, although he still performed some good counters and added that needed fast pace to the match. It ended off quickly which was perfect for this match. <br /><br />4. John Cena v. Chris Jericho 6/10 It's funny looking back at Cena's very first PPV, how he used to act, how he used to dress, and how he used to look (watch his interview, it's pretty funny). This was a good intense match with Cena showing a nice variety of holds, suplexes, counters and some aerial. Jericho was sub-par but definitely helped Cena launch his career. Cena Wins.<br /><br />5. WWE Intercontenital championship: RVD v. Brock Lesnar 8/10 This was a very intense and good match. Both wrestlers styles really matched up well on the screen, with Brocks pure power and raw energy vs. RVDs skill full moves and quickness. RVD looked great in this match (better than his later matches with edge and cena)and the entire match was fast pace. The ending worked perfectly because it still preserved Brock's undefeated streak while giving RVD his just desserts in his home state.<br /><br />6. No disqualification match: Booker T v. Big Show 7/10 Another solid match that lacked a certain intensity as the RVD match but still a good follow up. Although it started off kinda slow (which it always is with big show) Booker T was impressive and did a sick move on the announcers table. The finisher was awesome, the ending was a great upset and big move up for Booker T.<br /><br />7. WWE Tag Team Championship: Hogan and Edge v. Christian and Lance storm 5/10 This was a mediocre match. Hogan comes out like usual to a huge pop but his variety of moves lacks that intensity and energy. Then again Christian doesn't exactly have the greatest athletic abilities himself. This ended up being a mediocre match at best but was still OK for PPV. <br /><br />8. Triple Threat Match for the Undisputed Championship: 10/10. Rock v. Undertaker v. Kurt Angle.<br /><br />Easily the match of the year. This is by far the best triple threat match i have ever seen. It had close falls, plenty of finishers, stolen finishers, raw energy, intensity and fast pace. No one could predict who would come out of this one. If your going to buy this DVD i would buy it strictly for this match. (ending? watch for yourself!)<br /><br />Overall this was a solid PPV with plenty of extra goodies to keep you watching again and again. Although this is hard to find (i had to pay a little more than usual for this DVD) it is definitely worth your money. | 0 |
This wonderful 1983 BBC television production (not a movie, as others have written here) of the classic love story 'Jane Eyre', starring Timothy Dalton as Rochester, and Zelah Clarke as Jane, is the finest version that has been made to date, since it is the most faithful to the novel by Charlotte Bronte in both concept and dialogue. <br /><br />A classic becomes a classic for very specific reasons; when film producers start to meddle with a classic's very lifeblood then that classic is destroyed. Thankfully the producers of THIS 'Jane Eyre' approached the story with respect and faithfulness towards the original, which results in a spectacularly addictive concoction that is worth viewing multiple times, to enjoy its multi-layers of sweetness and delight and suspense. The performances are delightful, the music is just right, even the Gothic design of the house and outdoor shots are beautiful, and set the right tone for the production. <br /><br />My only criticism, though slight, is that this version, like every other version ever made of Jane Eyre, ignores the Christian influences that built Jane's character and influenced her moral choices. In today's modern world a woman in Jane's situation wouldn't think twice but to stay with Rochester after finding out he had an insane wife and was still married to her. 'Oh, just get a divorce', she would say to her man, or she would live in sin with him. But Jane Eyre knew she couldn't settle for this course in life and respect herself. Why? This decision was based on the foundations of the Christian faith she had been taught since childhood, not from the brutal Calvinist Lowood Institution, but from the Christian example of a true friend, Helen Burns, who was martyred rather than not turn the other cheek. Someday I would like to see some version depict these influences a little more fully in an adaptation. A classic novel that ends with the heroine writing 'Even so, come Lord Jesus!' should not have the foundations of that faith stripped out of it. | 0 |
Recap: Not entirely familiar with the Shakespeare story of Macbeth, but my wild guess is that this is pretty close to the original, only set in present time. It tells the story of Macbeth, a member of a crime syndicate in Melbourne (?). He is a valued hit-man and in the favor of leader Duncan. But he and his lady has higher ambitions than that, and plan the murder of Duncan, and any competition of the throne. This is a story of betrayal and cold, brutal death.<br /><br />Comments: Very interesting idea, I must say. To use the story but change the setting to present time, but still keep the original (?) dialog. It sets a huge contrast between the classical poetic work and the violence. Promised to be extremely violent, it is a promise that it keeps, but not in the notion I imagined. It is very bloody indeed, but the violence is slow. Not just figuratively speaking that it is calculated, which it is too, but also literally. A lot of action is actually slowed down to slow motion and that is what brings the movie to its knees.<br /><br />What could have been a unique strength, the contrast between the superfluous and poetic dialog and the extreme violence, now turns into something else entirely. Now both slow the move down painfully much, so much that it actually becomes dull and boring at times.<br /><br />Also I can't figure out the context the three witches act within. Set to present time and reality I figure that such magical witchcraft had no place in the movie. Apparently it does, but to me it seems completely out of place. Not a subplot but a complete sub-story with it's own rules, completely different than the rest of the movie. Seems completely out of place. Surely it must have been possible to convert that part too to something modern. Drug-induced hallucinations perhaps (which I suspect that the director hints at but then he has left way too much witchcraft in it to be believable)? Now they only bring stretches of the movie that is clearly beside the story and I just waited for the real movie to begin again.<br /><br />A clear disappointment, but maybe something for Shakespearean-buffs?<br /><br />4/10 | 1 |
One of my desires is to be a film-maker, and I just have to say there's no way I will be able to compete with the powerful drama The War at Home. The reason is because the acting is perfect, and when you see the movie, you'll know what I'm talking about. All I can suggest is watching it, I got so involved in it and was extremely impressed.<br /><br />Estevez's and Sheen's relationship on the screen was absolutely amazing.<br /><br />And so was his relationship with his mother (Kathy Bates). Some of the best scenes include these 2. <br /><br />As well as the relationship between Sheen and his daughter, Estevez's sister in the film.<br /><br />10/10, and definitely in my top 10. I want the DVD! | 0 |
Black Rain is a superb film, but watch out for the DVDs currently being sold for as much as $300 apiece. I have the DVD, and it's terrible. Very tiny non-anamorphic image that has to be blown up to resolution-killing size. Acceptable sound. This is a primitive DVD that absolutely *has* to be rereleased.<br /><br />BTW, I also own the laserdisc and the VHS of Black Rain. The VHS is a huge step upward from the DVD! And the laserdisc has far and away the best picture of them allsubtitles in the black, sharp, big picture, simple but very good soundtrack. Buy the VHS and avoid the preposterous prices these scam artists are demanding! | 0 |
As a long-time fan of Studio Ghibli and especially Hayao Miyazaki films, I went to the film right on the opening day. When I went out of the theater I had this strange feeling that something was missing, this 'magical' feeling I was experiencing in all Miyazaki films before, but I couldn't say why it failed this time. After I thought about the other Ghibli movies, I may know the reason: this film had most of the elements of a great Miyazaki anime: cute characters, wonderful key animation, a great soundtrack composed by Joe Hisaishi and the warm story telling giving you the feeling of watching a high quality Japanese animation film. However, two elements were lacking: a deep story and dramaturgy. The purpose of this film was obviously to entertain small children with a simple story line as in case of 'Totoro', so a complicated story as been told in 'Spirited Away' or 'Princess Mononoke' is not really necessary, but on the other hand, this story was simply too superficial. I could not connect to the main characters, because there was no character development, dramatic scenes were only limited and did not last very long. I really hate to give only 7 stars for a Miyazaki film, because I would give 10 stars to all previous movies right away, but this time it was simply not this wonderful 'ghibli experience'. | 0 |
Margaret Mitchell spins in her grave every time somebody watches this mess! Fine costuming and sets can't even begin to overwhelm lackluster performances by Joanne Whalley (as the title character) and the ever-bland Timothy Dalton (as Rhett). Even worse than the acting--and perhaps partially explaining it--is the script, which is astoundingly cliched and predictable. Add to that hellishly bad script a score that'll have you cringing, and you've got a disaster I wouldn't wish on any viewer. SCARLETT is just amazingly lousy, and I can't imagine how it ever got made, much less made it to video. | 1 |
I have to say that I used to be a huge fan of the series. The first 3 were great and the others had their moments, but this new BETA HOUSE is one of the worst movies I have ever seen. It is a shame since this was a great series and it just keeps getting worse. I know they are made for DVD films but some effort would be nice.<br /><br />There are no laughs, just a couple of good one-liners that will bring a smile if that. There is pretty of nudity and very hot chicks. But neither the sexy stuff nor the jokes really work.<br /><br />To add to all that this is a RACIST film too or as racist of a film one can make without asking to be called racist. I am NOT one of those people who think everything should be politically correct. But the portrayal of minorities is very offensive.<br /><br />I wouldn't waste any time on this garbage. See the previous versions, they will make you laugh not sick. | 1 |
On the 28th of December, 1895, in the Grand Café in Paris, film history was writing itself while Louis Lumière showed his short films, all single shots, to a paying audience. 'La Sortie des Usines Lumière' was the first film to be played and I wish I was there, not only to see the film, but also the reactions of the audience.<br /><br />We start with closed doors of the Lumière factory. Apparently, since the image seems a photograph, people thought they were just going to see a slide show, not something they were hoping for. But then the doors open and people are streaming out, heading home. First a lot of women, then some men, and one man on a bike with a big dog. When they are all out the doors close again.<br /><br />Whether this is the first film or not (some say 'L'Arrivée d'un Train à la Ciotat' was the first film Lumière recorded), it is an impressive piece of early cinema. Being bored by this is close to impossible for multiple reasons. One simple reason: it is only fifty seconds long. But also for people who normally only like the special effect films there must be something interesting here; you don't get to see historical things like this every day. | 0 |
The Man with the Golden Arm, Otto Preminger's controversial, panoramic crime drama, plays itself out among the mental descriptions of its living and architectural occupants, in rhythmic, lashing arrangement. Opening the film, a closeup from within a bar of Frankie looking in through the window, already tells us to the prominence that the protagonist's subjective experience will grasp. Pulled in the direction of increasingly slighter spaces, the film shuts itself off, as the local gangster's long-drawn-out poker game shuts itself from the daylight, bolts itself in, as Sinatra's Frankie Machine has himself locked in a room in the celebrated scene of his harrowing struggle to overcome his habit. In delving into the shapes and faces of its jazzy urban haven, the visual traffic in The Man with the Golden Arm characterizes skewed psychological circumstances, forming an overpowering environment, as maintained by the recurring tracking shots into closeups of Frankie's eyes.<br /><br />The grace of this fiery drama, striking as early as the exciting opening crane shot, displays the command over the perceptible world that studio production allows. The wonderfully dilapidated urban sets define an independent place with no beginnings or ends, an indeterminate state, the sort that in reality hardly last as long as this skid row seems to before being gentrified or leveled. The flair of certain performances, particularly Robert Strauss's as the wonderfully named underworld gambling boss Schwiefka and Arnold Stang as Frankie's trusty four-eyed lapdog, becomes this fiery surreal feature pleasingly. The premise of drug addiction, Sinatra's powerhouse performance, Elmer Bernstein's infectious, forceful jazz score and Saul Bass's famous, influential and controversial opening sequence centering on the animated paper cut-out of a heroin addict's arm ensured that, in its era, The Man with the Golden Arm presses forward upon the cause for realism in the still reticent Hollywood. It is impressionistic and subjective, as I say, but its intent, its force and its spirit are much closer to home.<br /><br />What absorbs me the most in this film is its aspect as a gangster film. It has the illegal card games, short cons, the fights, the guns, the double-crosses, characters on the lam, a femme fatale, a stunningly sexy gun moll, the shady nightclubs and urban landscape, but it does more than exploit this environment for entertainment. Really, it is the perfect environment, and genre, in which to tell this story, a crime-ridden urban borough where it's all too comfortable to escape through a bottle or two, or three, or four, or drugs, a transient dose that really just functions to keep one in obscurity from any enlightenment and all the clear scenarios the world could bid. | 0 |
Let me first state that I rarely review movies, I only comment if I'm blown away or disappointed in something that I thought was going to be good. Killshot was a major disappointment on so many levels. The script was horrible, the acting was sub-par (espically coming from heavy weights like Rourke and Lane) and the editing and effects were comical, (blowing up cars etc. etc.) Rosario Dawson had a horrible role, I can't believe would even accept it, it was such a misuse of her talent I can't even put into words. I should have know after I saw the trailer for this movie 3 years ago and it kept being put on the shelve that their was a serious problem with this film.......... B movie all the way.........don't bother unless your really bored........ | 1 |
I was -Unlike most of the reviewers- not born in the 80's. I was born on may 14th 1994. Despite this, my life was very much in the style of the 80's. When other kids had playstations, I was playing Zelda on my NES etc. Now, this movie holds a special place in my heart already despite me being only 15 years old at the time of writing this review. I, because of my 80's style early Childhood, watched many TV shows and saw Many movies that other kids didn't see, and this movie was one of those, and one of the greatest too.<br /><br />It starts off in the Los Angeles home of Alvin Seville, Simon Seville, Theodore Seville and David Seville. David, the Chipmunk's adoptive father, is in a rush to get to the airport as he is going on a business trip around Europe. His taxi is almost there and The Chipmunks help him pack. While they are talking, Alvin expresses his will to come with Dave and to see the world (Even though, technically Dave is only going to Europe, so to Alvin, apparently only America and Europe qualify as ''The World''). David is leaving the Chipmunks in the care of Miss Miller, much to the displeasure of the boys. Soon Dave is off to the airport and the Chipmunks are left at home with Miss Miller. Later, at a local Café the Chipmunks are playing a game of ''Around the World in 30 days'' against the Chipettes(Brittany, Jeanette and Eleanore). After losing the game to Brittany after having his Hot air Balloon eaten out of the sky by a crocodile, Alvin get's in an argument with Brittany about who would really win a race around the world. Two diamond smugglers sitting at a nearby table, Klaus and Claudia Furschtien overhear their argument and, needing a safe way of transporting their diamonds over the world, decide to fool the children into delivering them for them. They set up a race around the world, where each team will have to deposit a doll in their own likeness (Secretely filled with diamonds) at drop offs around the world and receive a doll in the opposing team's likeness (secretely filled with the payment for the diamonds) to ''varify that they were there''. The winning team would then receive a 100.000 dollar reward. They do this because they believe that Jamal (An Interpol agent who has been hot on their heels for some times now) would never suspect them because they are just kids (However, this seems to be redundant, because on their travels, the kids do not have to go through any security checks and are never even questioned about the dolls, I suspect that neither would Klaus or Claudia if they had taken the diamonds there personally.) And so begins a great adventure. This film is a classic and I see no reason why anyone would not like it. It features great animation and top-notch voice acting, not to mention the Kick-ass music (Pardon my french :P). My favorite song is without a shred of doubt ''The Girls and Boys of Rock and Roll'' An amazing rock song that cannot be topped. It's also my favorite moment in the film. Other notable songs include ''Getting Lucky''(Kind of Suggestive for a kid's film eh?) and ''My Mother'' as well as ''Wooly Bully'' and ''Off to see the world'' Not to mention the main theme of the movie heard during the opening credits performed by the Royal London Philharmonic Orchestra. The scene with ''My mother'' still brings a tear to my eye. In relation to the song ''Getting Lucky'' I first didn't think anything of it, but when I grew older and learned about life, it became clear that that song was a little bit suggestive. That song, along with the fact that the animators insist on the audience knowing the color of the Chipettes panties. This is especially apparent in the scene in Egypt when the Chipettes are being chased by the Arabian Prince's men, when Eleanor leans over the side of the hot air balloon basket and her skirt defies gravity completely. While this does nothing to draw from the overall quality of the film, it's one of those unexplained things like why nobody in the world seems to mind that there are 4-feet tall Chipmunks walking around and speaking in incredibly high-pitched voices and treat them just like they would any human child. Anyway, A bit after that scene, the Chipettes discover the diamonds in the dolls and decide to go find the Chipmunks and get home. The Direction of Janice Karman perfects this movie as she and her husband, Ross Bagdasarian Jr. know the characters better than anyone. They even do the voices of the Chipmunks and the Chipettes. Ross doing the voices for Alvin and Simon (as well as Dave) and Janice doing the voices for All the Chipettes and Theodore. Speaking of male characters that are voiced by female voice actresses, Nancy Cartwright (The voice of Bart Simpson) makes an appearance in this movie. She plays the part of the Arabian Prince, a very small, but important role. The ending is of course, a happy one. The Crooks have been caught, the loose ends tied and The film ends when the Children, Dave and Miss Miller are driving into the sunset, Alvin complaining about not having gotten his 100.000 dollar reward for winning the race, which annoys Dave until he finally yells ''ALVIN!'' and the screen fades to black<br /><br />Classic ending, by the way. I hope you found my review of this movie useful, and if you haven't seen this flick, give it a watch, It's worth the money. This Nostalgic classic from the 80's gets a solid 10 out of 10. <br /><br />''Headin' for the top, Don't you know! we never stop believing now'' | 0 |
This is the follow-up creation to Better Off Dead. In a competition, Better Off Dead would win hands-down. But for star power, One Crazy Summer outshines Savage Steve's better script. Problems with One Crazy Summer (OCS): casting. Better Off Dead (BOD) was cast so much better. Friendship: OCS shows Cusack giving hateful looks to Bill Murray's little bro. Trouble on the set?? More outrageous friends in OCS, but more genuine friends in BOD. Plot was good. You'll predict some of it, but even the predictable parts go further than you think they could. So, even though this is Better Off Dead's ugly stepsister, it's worth a look. See Demi Moore before the plastic surgery if for no other reason. John Cusack fans, you gotta see it, just to say you have. If you don't like Bobcat Golthwaite, I'm sorry. I don't like him either, but you can't escape him in this one. At least he does a great job in the film doing a tribute to another movie monster. Editing needed help on the beach, but for most part, not much to complain about. Overall, it's good and funny. But try not to compare it to BOD or you'll find it lacking. *sigh* | 0 |
The film isn't perfect by any means but despite this it is very fun and amusing to watch. I am the first one to agree that Victor Fox isn't really that attractive and his music and style are pretty cheesy. I also agree that the film has some odd distractions and some scenes don't work well. So what? If it makes you smile and you enjoy it who cares? Does every film have to make sense? Does every film have to be perfect? No. A person could get razed admitting that they love this film. Again, so what? It's got lovable characters, it's well shot, the acting is mostly good, it never becomes too maudlin or dramatic, it's quirky. Look at how many people love I Dream of Jeannie. Is it perfect? Heck no! And while this is very different, I say check it out and you'll be in a good mood after you see it. | 0 |
(As a note, I'd like to say that I saw this movie at my annual church camp, where the entire youth group laughed at it. I bought it when I saw it on a shelf one year later, if only for the humor I derived from a bad attempt at making an evangelical movie.)<br /><br />Lay it Down falls short of many movie fans' expectations on several different planes. Most of the problems lie within the impersonal acting. Regardless of the nice cars in the film, or the truth in Christ's sacrifice for you, as a movie AND witnessing tool, Lay it Down hardly delivers. <br /><br />Most good opinions of the movies are supported by Christians agreeing with the message. While it's easy for a Christian to agree with the points delivered, the audience hardly ever witnesses life outside a cliché. The fighting scene between Ben and his brother is horribly dubbed. And there are at least three blatant typos in the subtitles.<br /><br />I encourage anyone to watch the movie a second time with the director's commentary on. It really helps you understand just why the movie was written how it was. The director's views on secular society are practically opposite of what would cater to a movie-goer's needs: he shows a pedantic understanding of Nonchristians, as well as some points of religious conflict; most of the editing, he admits, was rushed, but 'satisfactory'; he thought the over-used transitions and themes to be effective; and was completely happy with the acting. <br /><br />He also inserted motifs that he was rather proud of: -All (read: most) of the names are significant. Ben Destin = 'Been Destined', Gus Pelman = 'Gospel Man', Nicky D = Nicodemus. -The car doing donuts is symbolic of the circling nothingness that is a life without Christ. -When Ben leaves on Pete's motorcycle, he crosses his crutches to form a 'cross'.<br /><br />I'm not making any of those up. He throws around things like this in between saying while street racers and the like 'blow their brains out with guns', and how 'God is in control when your born and when your die'. Yes, that was not a typo. He really says that.<br /><br />I have (little) forgiveness reserved for this movie. The 'cool cars' and 'good message' don't do jack to make this movie good. However, the movie was made from a group of unprofessional individuals on a budget less than 1/100th of 'The Fast and the Furious's', and the time limit was unforgiving. With that in mind, I give it a score of 2/10, instead of the 1/10 I so dearly think it deserves. | 1 |
Why did I have to go out and buy (yes buy!) JACK FROST 2: REVENGE OF THE MUTANT KILLER SNOWMAN??? Maybe it was a burst of temporary mental derangement? But I'm guessing it's because I kind of enjoyed the first JACK FROST. It was a silly but funny horror-comedy which had some okay effects by Screaming Mad George. That and the fact that on the back-cover of the sequel there was this nice picture of this guy impaled by this giant icicle (coming out of his mouth with a lot of blood and all). So I thought: if it's as idiotic as the first and has some nice splatter/gore in it, it should be fun, right? Well, I was so dead wrong! <br /><br />Let me first say that the movie deserves some credit for having an immensely insane and retarded plot. I mean, a mutant killer snowman on a tropical island that spawns mutant killer baby snowballs which can only be killed or harmed by bananas??? As much as I love the premise, I really hated the movie. First of all: while the first JACK FROST looked like an actual movie (seemingly being shot on real film and all), this sequel has the look and feel of a third-rate soap-opera. It has this way too slick shot-on-video look. The lighting is just plain awful (bright white spots for the day look, and stupid colors like blue and green at night). The acting... well don't even go there. The dialogues range from stiff to extremely senile (that Jamaican man was just moronic, saying 'man' after every sentence). And when it comes to the voice of the killer snowman, all I could think of was a seventh-rate Chucky from CHILD'S PLAY spewing dumb and supposedly witty one-liners before he kills someone.<br /><br />The best joke was were one guy asks 'Why are you talking to your watch?'. And the best scene was undoubtedly the one with that beautiful Asian chick popping up out of nowhere and taking a swim in the pool totally naked (thank god for that!). Oh, yeah, and that little scene over the end-credits with those two Japanese dudes on a miniature ship being badly dubbed had me laughing too. But the worst thing about this movie was: Where was the gore and splatter action everyone is talking about? There were plenty of occasions to show some decent gory killings. A lot of people were killed off in original ways here, but all off-screen. Like I've read in many other comments, there were indeed nice set-ups to a head explosion, a crushed body, eyes being poked out, tongue ripped out,... but on the crucial moments the editor cuts away to some blood splatters on the floor or nothing at all. That frontal shot of that British guy being impaled (from the back-cover of the DVD) wasn't even in the movie. I only saw that particular killing filmed from the back (meaning I didn't see sh!t!). I was waiting throughout the whole movie for that to happen, and then I get to see nothing?!?! What a let-down! Could it be that I saw a cut version of the movie? That would be a shame, 'cause only a decent amount of splatter-fun could have saved this movie if you ask me. Seeing a lot of killer snowballs reduced to bloody pulp just didn't cut it for me. Speaking of those snowballs: they were done very poorly. They made MUNCHIES look like state-of-the-art 'animatronics'. But I guess that was the whole point of it. At some point, the special effects crew even turned to some laughably bad CGI. Boy, you really have to see it to believe it. Best is to not see it, actually, 'cause this flick is just too bad (okay, I did laugh with it, for it kept getting worse and worse). Just stick with the first JACK FROST (1996) and you'll be okay (just bare in mind that it's a pretty silly horror-comedy but fun in it's own right).<br /><br />It's funny, but writer/director Michael Cooney somehow must have realized that he was a pretty bad director after JACK FROST 2, and then focused on writing. Turns out he then wrote two pretty good thriller screenplays for THE I INSIDE (starring Ryan Phillippe) and IDENTITY (starring John Cusack). So the man seems to have some talent after all.<br /><br />Now it would be far too easy to give JACK FROST 2 the lowest rating possible. So I say one point for that naked Asian babe doing the skinny dipping and one point for those completely retarded snowball babies. Way to go Mr. Cooney! | 1 |
Man oh man... I've been foolishly procrastinating (not the right term, there's a long list!) to watch this film and finally had the chance to do so. And 'news' are: Marvellous labyrinthine spectacle!<br /><br />For any Von Trier's 'follower': both Rigets, Element of Crime, Dogville, Dancer in The Dark, The Five Obstructions, etc... Europa is probably the differential for its greatness in visual terms. Everything is beautifully somber and claustrophobic! You really get the feeling of being inside this 'imaginary' nightmarish time warp. Taking from the masters of surreal cinema like Bunuel, Bergman, till noir films of the 40's with acidic drops of avant-guard Von Trier leads the art-film scene as the 'well intended totalitarian' movie maker of nowadays. His authoritarian way of dealing with very intricate issues, without being irrational, hits the nerve of the viewer with the intent to cure some of the deepest wounds we feed in our hypocritical world.<br /><br />As Utopian as it seems, I do believe people like Von Trier could help society in many ways in a broader aspect. The day films and filmmakers that carry this sort of power are no longer necessary, as a tool for reflection, perhaps it could be the start of a new era: 'The age of emotional control over our fears'. This is what he offers to us constantly through his work over and over.<br /><br />Bravo! | 0 |
It's too bad iameracing wants to deny the reality of Faulkner's and Clarence Brown's purpose in the creating of the story and film of 'Intruder In The Dust'. I suppose the burden of a history of racism is difficult for any Southerner to bear and I can understand that. But to say that this film was not specifically about racism is ridiculous and inaccurate. YES (to borrow your use of the upper case) iameracing, there are many many many places where blacks and white people in the South get along quite well. But to deny the way that black people were and sometimes still are forced to live, the conditions and injustices they have had to endure are not imaginary. Sometimes black and white people got along because of genuine affection and understanding. Sometimes it was only as long as blacks 'knew their place'. The point of making Juano Hernandez character (in film and print) a somewhat prickly type, not warm and fuzzy, was to underscore the fact that bigotry is wrong in and of itself and human rights are just that for everyone regardless of whether we like a particular individual or not. <br /><br />It would do iameracing good to stop denying the existence of racism and the great harm it has done to Americans of all stripes. The fact is that black people (among others) did not, as a rule, not an exception, receive the benefits of the justice system as even-handedly as whites. Segregation, discrimination and lynching are historical fact. People like iameracing might claim these things were not as widespread as some think and would probably love to exonerate their ancestors and heroes from any connection with such behavior. It would be a wonderful thing if iameracing's Southern ancestors (if any)never participated in any of the horrible racist actions that mar this country's history and I hope they didn't. If that is so congratulations to them but that fact, if true, does not erase the fact that others did. And even if the horrible things that were done to blacks in the South (and other areas, let's not forget the Draft Riots of the Civil War Era)were only half as numerous, only a third, does that make them any less horrible? Is the murder of ten children the hanging of ten men the sexual assault of ten women any less horrible than the same things happening to a hundred? <br /><br />Iameracing asks us to get the 'Mississippi Burning' chip off of our shoulders before we see 'Intruder In The Dust', well I ask you, did the murders of the civil rights activists happen or not? Why should that be forgotten? Forgiven? Maybe. But in order to prevent their recurrence they cannot be forgotten or revised into minor occurrences. The racism that is displayed in 'Intruder In The Dust' is displayed there quite purposely. It is there to make a point. <br /><br />On a cinematically historical level it is also ridiculous for iameracing to discount the racial angle. Any viewer of films that were filmed before the 1960's knows that black actors/characters/extras were usually deliberately cast. To judge from our movie history; wars were always fought by middle aged white men; There were no black people in the Old West; it was possible to walk down a street in a major city and never encounter a black person; there were no black hospital orderlies,taxi drivers,clerks, salespeople etc. Blacks were almost never cast with regard to a role unless race was a factor. If Falukner (and Brown) had wanted to tell a simple murder story he probably would not have made the Hernandez character black. <br /><br />Racism exists iameracing. Probably for different reasons I am sure, we both wish that it didn't but it does. Wanting things to be the way we would like them to be probably can't be helped but it still does not make them so. | 0 |
I really wanted to like this movie. I absolutely love kenny hotz, and spenny rice has a charming side to him. Not that I like spenny at all. Spenny ruins this movie. He should of let kenny and his hot girlfriend pitch the movie.<br /><br />Anyways, it's pretty boring aside from a scene with Roger Ebert in it. There really isn't too many celebrities in this movie, and most don't seem to say more than one line. Overall this movie was disappointing. I would only suggest watching it if you got it with the season 1 DVD of kenny vs spenny (it comes for free on the 3rd disc). Regardless of this production, I am still very excited to check out The Papel Chase. | 1 |
My first exposure to Japanese animation director Hayao Miyazaki and his Studio Ghibli production company was when an English-dubbed version of Spirited Away was released about 7 years ago. What a wonderfully creative and unique film experience that was! So on that note, I managed to get my movie theatre-employed friend to see this new film of Miyazaki with me especially since he loves all things Disney (this movie's U.S. distributor). Once again, all I can say is 'Wow!' What awesome visuals concerning the way water is depicted as the ocean...and what about the title character's transformation from a goldfish to...and seeing how some characters' demeanor changes...and, well, watch this movie if you want to know what I'm talking about. Oh, and the voices being used for this American-dubbed version: Tina Fey, Betty White, Liam Neeson, Cloris Leachman, and Lily Tomlin. Good choices all. Does everything make sense? No, but that's part of the childlike charm that permeates throughout. There's plenty of funny scenes concerning Ponyo and the boy and many other people they encounter. Oh, I think I've written too much so I'll just highly recommend Hayao Miyazaki's Ponyo. | 0 |
A group of young filmmakers with virtually no budget set out to make something clever and original -- and while there is a bit of originality and some skilled drawing in this slacker puppet show take on 'Dante's Inferno,' there is nothing especially clever. Dante's 'Divine Comedy' was a brilliant piece of social commentary. This film is a vaguely moralistic student film with pretensions to High Art.<br /><br />I suspect those who loved this film were those readily amused by the sophomoric pokes at some icons of the political and/or religious right, and that those who hated it took offense at seeing their favored icons poked. Be that as it may, few of those pokes actually rose to the level of satire.<br /><br />The high point of the movie is a sudden outbreak of 'Schoolhouse Rock' on the subject of lobbying and the 'revolving door.' It's really a shame that the entire film couldn't have been a musical. That would have stripped away a great deal of the annoying film school pretentiousness and added a far stronger element of fun. | 1 |
In the middle of The Hole I e-mailed a friend of mine to summarize it. Not sure if the film would break down into a series of submissive gestures, I felt a little un-easy recommending it, but then I saw the ending. It's perfect. I've been living in Korea for 6 months, and this film could just as easily summarize the strange ennui and frustration of any Asian metropolis as it takes on Taiwin here. It uses the myth of Hong Kong musicals the same way Godard or Hartley use Western musicals, but takes it to an extreme, it's gritty world and occasionally Kafka-esquire logic make it all the better. I really feel like The Hole's closest comparison is Hal Hartley's Surviving Desire, but have a kinda bleak edge to what are ultimately hopefully and strangely metaphorical films. Anyway, this is what I wrote to Esther. Hope you like The Hole too.<br /><br />Hey,<br /><br />watching a move called the hole. Taiwanese I think seems a bit to weird for china unless it's hong Kong. it's worth seeing so far. it's about a guy and a girl in an apartment complex. the guy's ceiling caves in and the girl starts to get annoyed and well it's kinda a weird metaphor for the simultaneous pleasure ,degregation, and pain of a rather intense crush. there's also a kinda zombie-virus-sub-plot too and a lot of weird little scenes where the girl acts out her desires through rather innocent and kinda fun 50's doo-wop sequences. worth a look. | 0 |
George Hearn really went all out and over the top which in this case was great. I've heard the Len Cariou version but it was too tame. George was great in that character - very expressive.<br /><br />Angela Lansbury was perfect for the part. She gave a great performance. She gave the Mrs. Lovett a great devious and comical personality which balanced out the dark story.<br /><br />I love the dark humor when Angela Lansbury sings her songs as well as her physical expressions and the angry emotions of George Hearn in his songs of rage, vengeance and distress.<br /><br />I've watched this play 20 times since 1985 when I saw it on PBS. I bought it on video (after copying it in 1985 on my own)when it came out in 1990 and I definitely bought a copy of the DVD when it came out in 2004. | 0 |
Alicianne (Laurel Barnett) becomes a live in babysitter for young Rosalie Nordon (Rosalione Cole) who has recently lost her mother. But Rosalie misses her dead mother a lot and continuously visits her grave (conveniently located in a cemetery right behind the house) late at night...where she also meets her 'friends'...<br /><br />This starts off good with a truly eerie sequence in the cemetery...then falls apart. The story is thin and there is TONS of padding to make the film 85 minutes long. The acting is terrible across the board (with Cole easily being the worst). Badly directed with some of the WORST editing I've ever seen in a motion picture. Scenes (and sound) are just cut off with no rhyme or reason. Also the film has terrible (and obvious) post-production sound.<br /><br />As for blood and violence--forget it! There's very little and what there is looks incredibly fake. I've NEVER seen such fake-looking blood--looks like ketchup! Boring, pointless--a rightfully forgotten drive-in movie. You can skip this one. | 1 |
I just got this video used and I was watching it last night. The acting started out extremely bad (hey------hey------twister) but got very good soon after wards. The tornadoes looked extremely fake, and many of the CGI effects were very dodgy, but the scene with the house cracking apart and the contents inside being blown around and sucked out were extremely well done, and just about on par with movies like Twister. The scenes of devastation were also extremely well done too. The story was very well written, and it's refreshing to see a movie like this stray away from the same old 'disaster formulas' movies of this genre seems to have been stuck in for 30 years.<br /><br />While this movie had a very weird mix of FX and acting quality, this merits an A in my book. | 0 |
`Castle of Blood' (aka `Castle of Terror') is a well-crafted, surprisingly spooky entry from Italian director Anthony Dawson. Exquisite black and white cinematography, flawless dubbing, superb casting, fairly logical scripting, deliberate pacing and a surprise (though totally appropriate) ending set this one apart. Only the films sometimes hokey music and the rather abrupt `love at first sight' between Elizabeth (Barbara Steele) and Alan (Georges Rivière) mar an otherwise surprisingly entertaining movie.<br /><br />While visiting England, Edgar Allan Poe sits in a pub, telling one of his ghostly stories to Count Blackwood. Recognizing the great writer, Alan, a young news reporter, requests an interview with Poe. During the course of the conversation, Poe reveals that all of his stories are true. Incredulous, Alan expresses his skepticism about life after death. Count Blackwood offers to bet Alan 100 pounds that he cannot survive this night in Blackwood's castle, a night following Halloween when the dead walk. Alan cannot afford the bet, so he bets his life for a 10 pound wager.<br /><br />Unlike Mario Bava's overpraised `Black Sunday,' (aka `The Mask of Satan'), `Castle of Blood' is fairly restrained, making the few moments of violence even more dreadful, especially surprising from a director usually associated with those terrible Italian space movies from the 60s.<br /><br />It's a pity the only version of this film I've found is badly deteriorated (and recorded) pan and scan version. Even so, it is well worth seeing, and cries out for a modern remake, perhaps with Christina Ricci or Jennifer Love Hewitt in the role of Elizabeth. Watch it and enjoy a film that compares well with Robert Wise's `The Haunting'. | 0 |
Coyote Ugly might have been much more effective if the film-makers had made it an R-rated guilty pleasure/exploitation film (with plenty of nudity.) But since the PG-13 rating is what all the studios are wanting these days, we end up with a movie like this: a PG-13 'tease' flick that isn't allowed to go nowhere near as far as the movie should have gone.<br /><br />The script is go generic that it is easy to guess what plot point is going to occur 15 minutes before it actually happens. The acting is adequate, but the characters are so paper-thin that nothing could be done with them. There were also a lot of points where it seemed like I was watching a music-video rather than a movie.<br /><br />The film's only assets are the amazingly beautiful female leads. We get to see them in some extremely tight and pretty revealing outfits.....but only so much could be shown due to the PG-13 constraints. There's plenty of cleavage and toned, heaving bodies doing some well-choreographed dance numbers, but there's no nudity or sex to speak of. Tyra Banks (she keeps getting even more insanely beautiful with age) is also in the movie for a very small amount of time. Sexy newcomer Piper Perabo is also very easy on the eyes (and she has a killer smile) and shows some genuine acting potential.<br /><br />The only people I could see this movie appealing to is pre-pubescent boys who aren't allowed to watch R-rated movies yet. That audience might get a lot out of it from a titillation aspect, but adult audiences will feel annoyed and cheated.<br /><br />Rating: the movie-1 the women-10 | 1 |
Just when it was easy to assume that a costume drama about royalty couldn't go anywhere, we are given a treat, a moving and intelligent drama anchored by strong and charismatic performances by Emily Blunt, a marvel in the leading role, Paul Bettany, Rupert Friend, Miranda Richardson, and Mark Strong, as the immediate forces that help shape the development of one of England's most powerful monarchs. 'The Young Victoria' dramatizes the tumultuous transition of the young woman into power.<br /><br />Emily plays the queen, with a good combination of raw strength and innocence, someone who recognizes the complexity of the task at hand, but who possesses enough confidence to move forward. She is able to portray Victoria, as an astute young woman who knows she needs support from some key players and must be able to stand up to those who might now have her best interests at hand.<br /><br />Victoria must fend a barrage of intrusions on her way to the crown, and even when she takes command of her new position, she discovers the road to self sufficiency will depend on making some very important decisions and of course, the right support. Luckily for Victoria, there is Albert, a man who appears to like her and is her soul mate. There is amazing chemistry between the two performers, and there's little doubt what the outcome will be, but there is the figure of Bettany's Prime Minister, a man who provides Victoria with some wise support and is also fond of her.<br /><br />Miranda Richardson and Mark Strong shine in supporting roles as two parties who might be of questionable character and exert a considerable amount of power in the upbringing of the young girl. Every one of the supporting characters could use a bit more of development, but what we can see in the screen might be enough to keep us focused on the central character and a superb performance by Blunt, an actress who has shown enough fire and passion in previous performances. In here, she is given the breakout role of her career, a real life historical figure, who broke the rules and managed to rule for a very long time. She shows the seeds of the strength and character the monarch might have needed in her later years. She also has a sweetness and innocence that became the foundation of her charitable work and future intervention in social changes.<br /><br />'The Young Victoria' is not a royal epic portrayal of England's ruling class. It is an intimate story of how human beings grow up and whatever special circumstances surround and shape them. In the end, the movie is a lovely entry in a year that has shown much emphasis on war and destruction. In here, there is a message that good writing and good mediation can take us very far, and there is of course, a good old fashioned love story. | 0 |
As low budget indies go, you will usually find that you get what you pay for, and let me just say, I didn't pay much for 'Frightworld'...<br /><br />Writer / Director: David R. Williams brings us the story of an abandoned amusement park, besieged by the vengeful spirit of a slain serial killer. Not a bad premise, but executed with a bevy of low budget mistakes. The camera work tries to be too cleaver for it's audience, by constantly using shaky quick-cuts to cover the fact that they really have nothing gory or scary to show us. This becomes evident right off the bat, as we are introduced to the would-be killer, and soon realize that the (acting) is the scariest thing happening... After a painfully long title sequence we are brought back to modern times, yet the acting remains the same. 'Frightworld' does generate some rather unique cinematography when showing scenery from inside the fun-house, but with an extremely long running time, it can't save the film from it's below average indie hell.<br /><br />There is some mediocre nudity, but not much for gore, which is usually the saving grace for these types of movies.<br /><br />Fans of really bad B-Movies might find something of interest here, otherwise, don't spend a lot of cash. | 1 |
I won't waste your time by describing the plot for this, the other reviewer already did this quite well. I will however give you my opinion of this movie. This movie is basically anti japanese propoganda. The japanese are portrayed as incredably evil b**tards who have respect for nothing, as well as having very poor martial arts skills (groups of japanese men get there asses kicked by single women on more than one occasion.) The fact that the japanese fighters lose almost every (if not every) fight in the movie kind of takes away the suspense. The plot is actually quite solid and perfect for a kung fu movie though. The problem lies in the fact that there's not much fighting. When there are fights some of the fighting is quite good, but other scenes are choreographed badly. One scene angela mao takes on six japanese in a church and kicks all their asses. The problem is they show her fighting them one by one when they're all supposed to be attacking at the same time. I gather this movie was incredably cheap considering how cheap some of the sets are. They use the same village set for when they are in korea and when they are in china without changing it at all. Some scenes are filmed at real locations though, and they look good. Overall the only real problem with the movie is it's slow moving and uninteresting plot. Since there are few fight scenes we have to rely on the plot for entertainment and, well, I wasn't entertained.<br /><br />one and a half stars out of four | 1 |
Punctuating the opening credits sequence is a swarthy man having a strange, all-too-real nightmare. Closing in on its dystopic 2054 Paris, the film begins to follow a woman into a grungy club, where she and a Slavic bartender convene outside on the deck. They toss exclamations at each other to the effect that she owes him more money although she believes she's paid it all. Another woman obstructs the budding violence, only to have a bitter fight with the woman herself. The initial woman storms out, and she is kidnapped. Christian Volckman's Renaissance appears to be another one in an assembly line of recent motion-capture-animated sci-fi noir pictures, but in spite of whether or not that is essentially true, it tells a neatly arranged, classically unraveling detective story that keeps us in the dark in its opening minutes, even whilst introducing Karas, the hard-boiled cop we recognize from the beginning as the man awakening from a terrible dream.<br /><br />The rudiments of classic film noir are all hit upon without any anachronistic changes, for all intents and purposes. It is in the harshness of its monochrome that Volckman's French thriller has followed no example. For the film's animators, unfettered by the challenges of physical lighting that would normally be faced, have been able to begin with a totally black frame, and to affix utter pitch-white according to the action on screen. As they scrupulously imitate the effects of real light sources throughout the frame, the distinction of black and white here is full-blown without even any of the slightest shades of gray to tone with the characters' less starkly definite moral codes, and the outcome is a harsh and judgmental vision of the direction in which commercial civilization is going, sporadically caused to undergo the most blaring and ruthless of illumination. It is the artistic study of film noir taken to their visual boundary of its philosophy, and nothing before has ever shared quite the same execution of this visual concept.<br /><br />All the characters in this decent cyberpunk film seem as if to have been walk off with purely from a Gothic comic book in black ink, but all together their physical responses, their motions and the nuances of their facial expressions look ashore within a clear humanity. Normally, films that try out new developments in animation allow their technical advances upstage all other facets of production. Sin City, for example, left substance and overall good screen adaptation from its source material to be desired.<br /><br />It may not be mind-blowing, it may have its narrative conventions and its voice-over cast may simply be adequate, but Renaissance, made for $19 million over six years, not only feels like actual noir instead of a rashly penned appropriation, but also is not secondary to all the visual innovation, which is played as if to be incidental. One leaves thinking not so much about how cool it is when Karas is evading bullets shot through a crowded glass Parisian street, but more about its ponderance of life and death, how life's tragedies, such as death, make life meaningful. | 0 |
My first hugely disappointing BBC/Jane Austen flick. The tone is off, the costumes are off, the hair is off, the music is from outer space, and Robert Hardy, bless him, looks like he's really annoyed to be in such a stinker. Even some of the casting is off. No, I take that back, a good director can make a silk purse out of a sows ear, so to speak. The performances in this thing are so over the top and melodramatic that it's almost a farce of a Jane Austen story, which is ironic since Northanger Abbey is a sort of homage/send up of the early Gothic novel. I wanted to slap the female lead after awhile; who made the decision that she should be such a ninny? I had to watch Pride & Prejudice ('95) immediately to get the bad taste out of my mouth. Phew! | 1 |
I watched this film because I'm a big fan of River Phoenix and Joaquin Phoenix. I thought I would give their sister a try, Rain Phoenix. I regret checking it out. She was embarrasing and the film just has this weird plot if thats what you want to call it. Sissy was just weird and Jellybean just sits on a toilet who both sleep with this old man in the mountains, whats going on? I have never been so unsatisfied in my life. It was just total rubbish. I can't believe that the actors agreed to do such a waste of film, money, time and space. Have Sissy being 'beautiful' didnt get to me. I thought she was everything but that. Those thumbs were just stupid, and why do we care if she can hitchhike? WHATS THE POINT??? 0 out of 10, shame the poll doesnt have a 0, doesnt even deserve a 1. Hopefully, Rain is better in other films, I forgive her for this one performance, I mean I wouldnt do much better with that film. | 1 |
River's Edge is an excellent film and it's a shame that it hasn't made more of a mark for itself in cinematic history. There were a number of gritty films based around school kids made in the eighties, but of all the ones I've seen; this is certainly the most nihilistic and disturbing. The film takes a storyline that is disturbing in its own right and adds the theme of teenage slackers and their uncaring attitude about things, which takes the story onto another level. The film works because the central story is interesting and it's played out by complex characters. The film begins with a murder. We then follow the murderer, nicknamed John, as he goes back to school and tells all his friends about what he has done. Rather than give the expected reaction, most of them hardly react at all and the strongest reaction that the murderer gets comes from Layne; who makes it his number one priority to help John clear up the mess he's in and get him out of it. The other friends mull over the crime, and before long one of them goes to the police...<br /><br />River's Edge features a host of great performances from its young cast. Keanu Reeves has a reputation for wooden acting, and for good reason; but he fits in very well to this early role and this performance is easily one of his best. Crispin Glover is the biggest standout as the slightly insane Layne. Glover always stands out in every film he's in, and while he does go over the top a little bit; he convinces well as the lead in this movie. Reeves and Glover receive good support from a talented young cast that includes Daniel Roebuck and Joshua john Miller, as well as the great Dennis Hopper in another wild role. The film features a very gritty picture which bodes well with its nihilistic tone. The central characters are all of the 'slacker/stoner' generation and the way that they genuinely don't seem to care about the murder of their friend is more shocking than the murder itself; and the point that the film tries to make about modern society is both strong and well defined. The film is also rather funny, owing to some of the characters' lines; but the humour is pitch black and clearly this film was never meant to be a comedy. Overall, this is an excellent and memorable film that is definitely worth seeing! | 0 |
We all know that countless duds have graced the 80s slasher genre and often deserve nothing but our deepest disgust. Maybe that's a bit hastey but damn if 'Slaughter High' wasn't terribly unoriginal, even for a slasher flick. Pretty much, the plot involves a kid who experienced a Carrie-like shower humiliation in high school and returns to the dilapidated building to seek out revenge on a group of former-bullies who all show up to reminisce. As you'd expect, they are killed off steadily by a masked madman on April 1st by means of electrocution, burning, hanging, and chemically altered beer. I've got a number of problems with the plot details and settings of this movie, but considering the ending, I feel the need to discard my complaints and just say that this is a complete waste of time. Ignore any thought of viewing this movie... | 1 |
i chose to see the this film on the day it opened nationally in france, as a personal way for myself to reflect on what had happened a year previous; the collection works as intended: it provokes a whirlwind of thoughts and emotions, working as an intellectual hommage, never stooping to cheap sentimentality nor knee-jerk reactionism.<br /><br />there have been many allegations made that the film is anti-american: while i cannot speak for everyone in this regard, i am one american who found such statements to be completely untrue. people make much noise about the egyptian segment, by Chahine, because it voices perspectives of palestinian suicide bombers asserting that civilians in a democracy are 'fair targets' for they elect the governments the bombers are seeking to attack, but this ignores much else in the piece: several perspectives are discussed, no one being held up as the truth, and critics--if they even saw the piece--seem to forget the fondness and warm dialogue that takes place between the director and the ghost of the american dialogue, and the director's intense sadness upon hearing of the tragedy.<br /><br />pretty much all of the films are beautiful, thoughtful & inspiring, in particular the brilliant work by Mahkmalbaf, Tanovic, Loach & Inarritu. Nair, good as usual, effectively tells a true story of an injustice committed against a muslim family in the wake of anti-islam hysteria that swept--and still sweeps--the states. i did find Gitai's piece a bit vulgarly loud and simple in it's critic of media hysteria in the face of terrorism, and Penn's piece was too impressionistic and elliptical for my tastes, though i had expected to like it. Borgnine is very good and brave in it. SPOILER WARNING: one reviewer below incorrectly read the falling of the towers as being a happy moment for the character; my read is rather that the falling of the towers is what, because light floods his room, keys him into the loss in his life that he refused to recognize. again this is a sort of impressionistic piece, for we know that if the towers were really blocking the light to this man's flat, then there would have been nothing but smoke and ash, not light, flooding through his window. | 0 |
I am still trying to determine whether the previous installment was worse than this one, or vice versa. Being that it is nearly fifteen years since I saw this film, the fact that I remember so little about it does not bode well. Perhaps it is simply because I only watched it once or twice, but I doubt it. If there was anything worth remembering about this film, you can rest assured I would remember it.<br /><br />At the time this film was released, the franchise was still entering its dying phase, so a lot of media coverage was allotted to it. It's never a good sign when teenie pop magazines contain explanations of the plot basics. One such article had to explain that Freddy was left too weak to infest the dreams of grown humans, so he decides to go after Alice's unborn son. So far, so good, but this is the job of the writer or the director to explain to the audience. It should not be left to some unrelated publication.<br /><br />Making use of the trivia given in part three about Freddy's conception, one could half expect scenes that would lift this joke out of the 'horror for infants' category, but alas, that was not to be. It goes to show the sheer idiocy of the American ratings system that a piece of B'harni-esque garbage like this could get the same rating as a genuinely frightening piece like the original.<br /><br />By this time, the franchise could not attract anyone with an active career. Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on how you look at it, Lisa Wilcox was there to provide a quotient of competent acting. Or perhaps she just looks competent by comparison to the rest of the cast. Either way, given that her last role was in something called The All New Adventures of Chastity Blade, I doubt she really had anything else going for her. Even poor old Robert Englund has been in better productions than that in the past fifteen years.<br /><br />Given that box office returns were in a steady decline, and not just for this franchise, at the time, one would have thought that the studios would realize neutering their films does not make them more saleable. In fact, this particular film, like its immediate predecessor, was so neutered that not only did it fail to attract a new audience, both succeeded in alienating the core audience that originally supported the franchise. Despite this, part five must be given some credit for not having the bright, luminescent feeling that made part four so insulting to look at.<br /><br />I gave A Nightmare On Elm Street Part Five a one out of ten. By trying to appeal to everyone, or the MPAA's idea of everyone, it succeeds in appealing to noone. Like parts two and four, one could erase it from the continuity entirely, and nobody would notice the difference. | 1 |
I was previously unaware that in the early 1990's Devry University (or was it ITT Tech?) added Film to its wonderful repertoire of technical degree programs. Well this movie must have been the product of the class valedictorian. My friend and I rented the original 1980 Boogeyman on my Netflix and this movie was on the flip side of the DVD. Do not waste your time with this movie. Awful awful awful. <br /><br />The filmmaker adds 2 main character's, a woman and her therapist. The woman has been having dreams about the Boogeyman and his victim's from the first film. Over 50% of this film is stock from the original movie. The rest of the movie is the main character having the bad dreams while her therapist drones on a the narrator. These scenes are shot through a filter so thick the characters glow. They would make Angela Lansbury look 25 years old. So, to recap, awful. Don't watch this movie. | 1 |
The film is a gross misrepresentation of Orthodox lifestyle and practice. NEVER will a Jewish court enforce a divorce between childless couples. Although the concept exists in Jewish law, the conditions are too numerous for it to actually ever take place. Childless couples do find it difficult to cope with their childlessness in a community where children are a very important part of life, but nowhere are they 'rejected' by their community as depicted in the film. They are treated with extreme sensitivity. In fact, many great Rabbis have lived their entire lives without children and never considered divorce.<br /><br />The depiction of Yosef, a horrible human being, is meant to - perhaps subconsciously - show the behavior of a typical orthodox male. In reality, it is as typical as a violent drunkard rapist is typical of secular society. Both exist in their own worlds and both are despicable.<br /><br />It is surprising that so many people form their opinions about a society based on a MOVIE (by someone who is personally biased against a community). I have always thought that it is only the Orthodox, because of their narrow-mindedness and insular lifestyle, who judge all secular people based on the violence and immoral conduct they read about in newspapers or see in the movies. | 1 |
Southern Cross, written and directed by James Becket is a waste of good celluloid and actor's efforts. A formula film is not necessarily bad if it pays off on it's promise, which this film does not. It is a tiresome concoction of movie cliches that can be traced to a thousand different films from the past. It is full of random and empty plot twists that add nothing but aimless action, such as a trip by the protagonists to a ghost town where the villains (unexplainedly) follow them. This was obviously concocted as an excuse for a shoot out and escape scene bordering on the preposterous, with people popping in and out of doorways and running past windows while firing pistols at each other. It makes one believe that somebody told Becket there was a ghost town in the Chilean foothills and he said, 'Oh great, lets do a shoot out scene there.'<br /><br />Don't even waste your rental money on this. It is a bunch of random bits and pieces from a hundred different films thrown together to call an action drama. | 1 |
The Blob is a classic 1950s B-movie sci-fi flick. You probably know the story: two teens (Steve McQueen & Aneta Corsaut) see a meteorite hit the ground, and when they go to look for it, they run into an old man with some weird...blob attached to his arm. They take him to the doctor's office, and then go to find out what happened. From there, the blob spreads, eating everyone in its path. The special effects are cheesy fun, as is the story. There are a lot of great touches, like the cop who plays chess over the radio with a cop in another district. It's no masterpiece, but it has a special place in its genre. Steve McQueen is very good. 8/10. | 0 |
Julia Roberts obviously makes a concerted effort to shake off her cotton wool Pretty Woman persona with this spurious spousal abuse thriller, but it's hard to imagine she'd end up putting in a performance as powerful and convincing (and oscar winning) as she did in Erin Brokovich based on the back of this rubbish. And make no bones about it, it's nothing more than a Julia Roberts vehicle, but unfortunately, her performance is not the most lacklustre thing about it.<br /><br />The plot has all the markings of a late night made-for-cable, and don't be under the impression that it will offer any insight into the dark world of domestic abuse because non of the characters are sketched out enough for you to really care. <br /><br />Ultimately disappointing and unsatisfying, without Roberts' name above the title, I'm sure it would have totally flopped, deservedly. | 1 |
This is a case of taking a fairy tale too far. The Enchanted Cottage delivers Dorothy McGuire as a 'terrible ugly' spinster and Robert Young as a disfigured pilot. Long story short: Scarface marries Spinster, after which their love transforms them, miraculously (lighting, cosmetics and the removal of fake scars), into beautiful peoplea magical change that they attribute to the enchantment of living in a seaside cottage that has been the abode of generations of honeymooners.<br /><br />If the story stopped there, fine; it would be a fable with a proverbial message: beauty is in the eye of the beholder. But it lurches ahead, reaching for reality. When Mr. and Mrs. Scarface greet their public, it comes as a painful shock to them that they're still homely. You see, they only appear beautiful to each other a situation which the audience is well prepared for because all the secondary characters have been sermonizing that ill-favored people really need to lower their expectations, and find other ways to be happy. You know. Take up hobbies. Spinster does woodcuts, for instance. Scarface considers collecting driftwood.<br /><br />The original playwright (Arthur Wing Pinero) and the filmmakers have zero faith in human nature. Their message is: You're either ugly or pretty, and no pretty person would ever love an ugly one. What's even worse, ugly people evidently need to imagine their lover as pretty. Reality just won't do.<br /><br />One wonders what Elaine Mason saw every day when she looked at her husband, Stephen Hawking. | 1 |
Forget depth of meaning, leave your logic at the door, and have a great time with this maniacally funny, totally absurdist, ultra-campy live-action 'cartoon'. MYSTERY MEN is a send-up of every superhero flick you've ever seen, but its unlikely super-wannabes are so interesting, varied, and well-cast that they are memorable characters in their own right. Dark humor, downright silliness, bona fide action, and even a touching moment or two, combine to make this comic fantasy about lovable losers a true winner. The comedic talents of the actors playing the Mystery Men -- including one Mystery Woman -- are a perfect foil for Wes Studi as what can only be described as a bargain-basement Yoda, and Geoffrey Rush as one of the most off-the-wall (and bizarrely charming) villains ever to walk off the pages of a Dark Horse comic book and onto the big screen. Get ready to laugh, cheer, and say 'huh?' more than once.... enjoy! | 0 |
This movie starts by showing you a map and then explaining radar and it is quite awhile before you ever see the deadly mantis. Probably a better movie in the 50's this dated piece is a bit to slow moving and the pay off in the end isn't very good. Though it has its moments like when the guy from Perry Mason argues with an old man and when he says 'I have narrowed the possibilities to one' excuse me, but when you narrow something down you have a couple or more possibilities not one...if you get it down to one you haven't narrowed it down, but you have in fact figured out what it is. The monster is standard 50's sci-fi fair, better than say the grasshoppers in the Beginning of the End. Acting is sub-par and the heroine is the most unattractive...in fact in some shots she does look like a guy in drag. You see plenty of fighter plane stock footage and other things, but you won't see much at all of the deadly mantis. | 1 |
This ludicrous film offers the standard 1970's 'hippie mentality' in a nut shell and bores us in the process. Its an attempt to rationalize absurd marriages of young, innocent women with old age sex fiends and wash ups. A naive young hippy played by the waif-like ( Kay Lenz ) hitch hikes and sleeps with all the wrong guys, and then one day she meets the ridiculous (Holden), already in old age, hard liquor drinking and washed up as an actor, and she decides that she is in 'love' with him. If you think that is superficial, the whole film encapsulates such scenes. She keeps saying how much she 'loves' him and she only met him, it wears thin and really quick. I couldn't help but laugh throughout the film. Its obvious she's just using him as a meal ticket but the director is immature enough to think we are going to buy that there is actually any love taking place. A disgusting scene is where the two are naked and having sex, I had to fast forward it because it almost inspired me to vomit. A corny offering of music from the 70's is also spread through the film. Avoid this if you can. Grade D. | 1 |
The 100 black and white half-hour episodes of the early situation comedy 'Mr. Peepers' were originally broadcast from 1952-55 on NBC. Like a lot of baby boomers this and 'Ding Dong School' are my earliest memories of television. Since both ran later in syndication it is hard to tell how many of these memories are actually tied to the original broadcasts.<br /><br />'Mr. Peepers' is worth checking out for more than its nostalgia value. It represents a very different style of situation comedy than shows like 'The Honeymooners' and 'I Love Lucy'. The genre could have gone in two different directions in those days and ended up taking the loud abrasive path of those two shows; which is probably why they still seem contemporary. <br /><br />'Mr. Peepers', which was differentiated by its intelligent restrained tone, may appear slow and dull in comparison. But it's really more a matter of adjusting to the different style. Once you get into the characters it will win over most intelligent viewers. Credit should be give to the show's producer, Fred Coe, a key figure in early television whose dramatic anthologies are also worth checking out ('Philco Television Playhouse', 'Lights Out', 'Playhouse 90', 'Producers Showcase', 'Playwrights 56', 'Fireside Theatre', etc.) even on kinescope.<br /><br />'Mr. Peepers' offered a much more gentle style with Wally Cox (to be the voice of 'Underdog' a few years later) in the title role, Robinson Peepers, a mild-mannered high school science teacher. His glasses were his trademark and a symbolic link to his name and role as a passive observer. <br /><br />The series provided Cox with an outstanding supporting cast. Tony Randall played his brash best friend, history teacher Harvey Weskit. Jack Warden played Frank Whip, the loud gym teacher whose mild bullying gave the show most of its conflict elements. <br /><br />There is some love interest competition involving the school's nurse, Nancy Remington (Patricia Benoit), with viewers quickly aligning with Mr. Peepers who seems a much better match for the gentle Nancy. Their on-screen marriage near the end 1953-54 season captured national attention, an early version of the 'Who Shot J.R.?' frenzy.<br /><br />Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child. | 0 |
Following the success of 'Paris, Je T'Aime', a group of directors decided to get together and make a similar anthology style film based in New York. Unlike the original film, the stories in this film seem to sometimes come and go too quickly--by the time you think are getting into a story, it's over in too many cases. And, the often start up and stop and then begin again--with the stories woven together. As a result, there is no title to indicate that a story is complete and it is less formal in structure.<br /><br />Sadly, however, while 'Paris, Je T'Aime' was hit or miss (mostly hit), most of 'New York, I Love You' was miss. The stories tended to be much more sexual in nature but also far less sweet--and often quite terrible. It was an amazingly dull and uninteresting film with only a few exceptional stories--and perhaps the often depressing music made it seem more so. Now understand, it was good quality music but its somber tone really, really made me feel like cutting my wrists! Among the better ones was the story about the young man who took a girl in a wheelchair to prom, the couple talking about cheating outside a restaurant (though this was also in the first film) and the crotchety old couple. This is all so sad because I had loved the first film so much--and I really WANTED to love this film. I respected what they tried but simply didn't like it very much.<br /><br />By the way, and this is NOT really a complaint, but I was amazed how many people were smoking in the film. For a recent film, that was unusual in our more anti-smoking culture.<br /><br />Also, if you get the DVD, there are two segments included as extras that were not included in the film. One consists of Kevin Bacon (wearing a cool fedora) eating a hotdog....and absolutely NOTHING more for almost ten minutes. The other features a teen who spends the film videotaping the world--including a very unhappy couple. | 1 |
All of the X-Men movies were great. And I mean all of them, including the long hated X-Men 3. They had solid characters (Magneto and Xavier were the best ones, in my opinion), and a good story arch.<br /><br />I was all excited when I heard this movie was on production, and my expectations grew bigger and bigger until I saw the movie. I was so disappointed.<br /><br />Hugh Jackman is not a bad actor (his best movie is The Fountain, although you won't hear about this movie when they talk about the actor), and his acting is not what screws the movie up.<br /><br />The whole film is plagued with lots of meaningless characters that add nothing to the plot (like Blob or Gambit), which were tossed there to make fans believe that the film makers had read the original comics.<br /><br />I am a fan of XMen, I have read many, many of their stories and this movie respected none of them. None. Not even the continuity. It doesn't respect Weapon X project, or the relationship between Wolverine and Sabretooth, or Emma Frost, the motivations for wolverine are plain stupid and seen in millions of movies: Revenge for the death of a loved one.<br /><br />Oh. What I was expecting the whole darn movie was a Berseker moment for Wolverine similar to the one he has in X2 in the school when Stryker men come in and he alone decimates the enemy forces, but hey, this is Fox, this a family flick and you will not see explicit violence from the most violent and gruesome Marvel hero.<br /><br />Besides, I had a feeling of constant dejá vù with this movie because Wolverine's Origins are already explained in X2, we already know how he got his adamantium skeleton so it kind of does not make sense to make a movie of something we already know.<br /><br />I personally believe that wolverine is one of those few characters that does not need a solid back-story because mystery is the nature of the character. Do we really want to know how the Joker got his scars? | 1 |
Needful Things was one of my favorite Stephen King books. But this movie is one of the worst book to film adaptations I have ever seen they changed so many things around that it made me sick. Even the concept of the book being deception, things not always what they appear reminder throughout the book was not shown in the movie. Althogh it was enjoyable as many Stephen King films are, but as many Stephen King films this one did not follow the book and became a piece of Hollywood trailer trash. 2/10 | 1 |
The only thing that 'An Inconvenient Truth' proves is that Al Gore is still an idiot. These 'unchallenged' experts are unchallenged because a response to their inane hypotheses is generally beneath real science. This is mostly false science folks. The greatest source of greenhouse gases - CO2 - is people, we exhale it and unless you're willing to start sacrificing your brethren to save the world, there's not a darn thing to be done. We've heard how the world was going to end as the result of man for more than 50 years. Fools publish a time line for their doomsday and when the time passes, nothing has happened. 'An Inconvenient Truth' is just another vehicle with which a disingenuous faction of American society can peddle their poop.<br /><br />And as to Al leaving the tobacco business because of his sister's death from cancer, that is a load too. Al couldn't run his farm any better than he could run the country. He was losing money on the operation because he didn't care to farm when he could make more $ on speaking tours. The only global warming that is unchallenged is the hot air produced by this gasbag! | 1 |
Expectacular THE ATOR's second part!! Directed rapidly by JOE D'AMATO, specialist in all kinds of subkinds(subgenres) of exploitation, and interpreted again by MILES O'KEEFFE. the budget of the movie debio to be derisory or minimal. In spite of not being a better movie of his antecesora not mas entertained, ATOR 2 either, it has something, something that makes it enterteining. His introduction you prop it explains ATOR's origin to us with images of the first part. The script is incredible, is like any comic-book of the brilliant ROY THOMAS. has so fantastic elements inside dle world of the SWORD and such FANTASY as invisible men, black gentlemen, cannibals - monkeys ... the role of the villain this one interpreted brilliant. The final this struggle very well. lacking mas violence and blood, but this one well. Never it becomes boring. It has everything what there was lacking ATOR 1. Be charmed with to my me!! 4/5 | 0 |
Saw this movie last night. I don't usually comment good or bad, as I think movies are like books in that there is something for everyone and everyone is different, tastes vary, yadda yadda. This movie was bad. By the end I thought, oh my, this is testing my patience. How many women really look and live like this when they hit 'rock bottom' and if I could just borrow some cash from mum and carry out to live my fashion designing dreams - gosh, life would be great! I was out for a nice chick-date flick with my girl (my darling hubby likes watching movies together and I knew this wouldn't be his thing), something light and easy on the senses, but this was one bad movie. We are intelligent and interesting movie watchers and this movie wasn't that. Annette Benning is a great actress, she held her own. Bad. Bad. | 1 |
Yeah, Madsen's character - whilst talking to the woman from the TV station - is right: the LAPD IS a corrupt, violent and racist police. And this movie changes nothing about it. Okay, here are the good cops, the moral cops, even a black one, whow, a Christian, a martyr. But this is a fairy tale, admit it. Reality is not like that. And most important for the action fans: The shoot out is boring. It's just shooting and shooting and shooting. Nothing more. Play Counter Strike, then you will at least have something to do. The only moral of this film is: The LAPD is good now. No more bad cops in it. If you like uncritical, euphemistic commercials for police and military service, watch this movie. It's the longest commercial I've ever seen. (2 Points for camera and editing). | 1 |
Fun, entertaining movie about WWII German spy (Julie Andrews!) falling in love with American pilot (Rock Hudson), while trying to get secrets from him. For some reason this was attacked by critics and shunned by the public in 1970--I can't see why. It's beautifully shot, has wonderful costumes and interiors, and exciting aerial dogfights. Also it has Andrews doing a strip-tease (strictly PG material) and singing a beautiful song--'Whistling in the Dark'. The movie does have problems. Andrews and Hudson did not get along during the shooting of this--and it shows. Their love scenes lack spark and they have zero sexual chemistry. Still, they turn in OK performances. The film is a little long (even in the 105 min director's cut I saw) and gets way too dark and serious at the end. Still, worth catching. Try seeing the directors cut...the other one runs half an hour longer! | 0 |
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