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This film is really terrible. terrible as in it is a waste of 84 minutes of your life. Special effects are so terrible. The acting wasn't convincing.<br /><br />Its about a crocodile that attack a view tourists as they are filming a documentary about "blood surfing". Blood surfing is when they surf around sharks but it turns terrible wrong when a 31 foot crocodile interrupts there holiday. The sharks don't look real. The crocodile is even worse, and it gets even more pathetic when they are running away form the creature, but the crocodile gets stuck and 2 females flash it. The deaths are fake and the pirates are just to fill in time.<br /><br />A pointless, terrible film thats not worth seeing!! | 0neg
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***SPOILERS*** ***SPOILERS*** If one were to review the film based on the premise alone, one might think that you were looking at an average animal orientated horror flick. The plot is as follows. A group of documentary filmmakers head off to an island in order to film a documentary about surfing with sharks or blood surfing. (I live in South Africa so it was released as "Blood Surf.") Admittedly, this seems to have a somewhat interesting idea behind it which, if it were explored further, could have improved the movie somewhat. However, this is not the case as the blood surfing part of the movie is minimal due to the fact that their documentary is interrupted by a rather large salt-water crocodile.<br /><br />The script is absolutely terrible. A good example of this is whenever someone gets eaten by the crocodile which is a frequent occurrence in this film, no one seems to give a damn. The most anyone person did in the film was to merely toast the victim in a scene which was meant to be poignant but just ended up being laughable due to the fact that the dialogue in this film was of a highly dubious nature. Another thing that really irritates about this film is the fact that they introduce characters who are totally superfluous to the film itself. They introduce a bunch of pirates who can only be seen to be adding another 10 minutes to a mercifully short film.<br /><br />The acting can be said to be mediocre. It probably would have been a lot more impressive if they did not have such a terrible script to work from. All in all there isn't one person who made a terrible impact on me. Every single person seemed to be a watered-down caricature and in this way, not one of these actors made any sort of impact on me.<br /><br />The crocodile itself is said to be huge, over 31 feet exactly and this sense of size is well portrayed by the obvious fake of a crocodile that they have provided for us in the film. The crocodile's death at the end of the film is so ridiculously fake and contrived that it makes one's stomach turn. With a huge cry of bravado, the hero of the film announces that he has a plan which turns out be falling down a hill and getting the crocodile to impale himself on a luckily-placed spike at the bottom of this said hill.<br /><br />All in all, I would say that this film is one which has to be seen for you to believe how bad it could be. What probably seemed like a good idea at the time suffered from a terrible script and an overwhelming sense of low-budgetness which all served to create a truly awful movie. | 0neg
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Why, o' WHY! ...did I pick this one up? Well... i needed a no-brainer in the summer heat, and the cover looked cool.<br /><br />Of course I should've known better. This is a really, really bad movie. And it gets embarasing when the makers know it's bad, and try cover it up by adding some sexy/beautiful women, and some sex-scenes to it. Well, folks... it does'nt cut it, does it!<br /><br />If you WOULD like a cool movie about a big reptile that is actually very, very good, well-played and funny: go rent Lake Placid! (that is an order) | 0neg
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This film is awful. The CGI is the very cheap gray blob CGI. The crocodile looks like a large gray smudge. The worst is that no effort at all is given to making it walk or look like it is alive. It is mostly a photo-shopped CGI that is placed into scenes and you almost expect to see the hand that is moving the CGI smudge across the screen. This is one of the worst examples of CGI effects that I have ever witnessed, and I have seen lots of the very bad Sci-Fi Channel movies.<br /><br />Aside from the terrible lack of special effects, the cast is composed of the typical low-cost actors who probably work as Waiters/Waitresses at local diners while they wait for their Big Breaks. Perhaps the most ridiculous scene in this movie is when one of the bad guys is attempting to sexually assault Kate and the giant crocodile jumps straight up out of the water to the second floor of the Villains Headquarters and through the balcony and pulls the bad guy off Kate and instead of crashing straight down through the building (and crushing Kate) the Croc just flies backwards at the same angle into the water. No laws of Physics can apply to this movie or the special effects. At least there is honor among crocodiles. | 0neg
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Blood Surf AKA Krocodylus is a fair film that has an okay cast which includes Dax Miller, Taryn Reif, Kate Fischer, Duncan Regehr, Joel West, Matt Borlenghi, Maureen Larrazabal, Cris Vertido, Susan Africa, Archie Adamos, Rolando Santo Domingo, and Malecio Amayao. The acting by the actors is fairly good. The thrills are fairly good and some of it is surprising. The movie is filmed fairly good as well. Same thing goes for the music The film is fairly interesting and the movie does keeps you going until the end. This is a fairly thrilling film. If you the the cast in the film, Monsters, Giant Animal films, Horror, Thrillers, Mystery, and interesting films then I recommend you to see this film today! | 0neg
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I expected a bad movie, and got a bad movie. But I couldn't really imagine in my worst fantasy how bad this movie was. I don't even want to try to explain what Blood Surf is about. Is not about blood surfing, but a big a$$ crocodile. They are complaining about the fake shark in Jaws, but Spielberg was wise and didn't show the shark until the end. Here the crocodile is shown a lot of times, and it's the worst fake crocodile I have ever seen, and they don't try to hide it. If you want to see a good fake crocodile watch Lake Placid. <br /><br />The director had an opportunity to make a decent surf/shark movie, but he had to make a bad b-monster movie. He had the chance to make an original surf movie, but he wanted to make a monster movie. So you have understand how bad this movie is, does it have some good parts? Not really, it got some nudity, and a sex scene that is taken straight out of a playboy movie. The acting isn't half bad either, and Kate Fischer looks good. Too bad she doesn't take her top off. The lead actors aren't bad either. They had some potential. The location was beautiful and the movie start good with some nice surf scenes. The blame is on the untalented writer and director. The dialogue is some of the worst I have ever seen, and the script is really badly written, and the director got no talent what so ever, and not much of a fantasy either.<br /><br />Don't watch it. Even if you want to watch the beautiful Kate Fischer. It isn't worth it. Watch Sirens to watch Kate nude, and watch Lake Placid if you want some good crocodile action.<br /><br />3/10 because I'm in a good mood, and Maureen Larrazabal looks good naked, and Kate looks good (but is bad actress,)and Dex Miller, Joel West and Matt Borlenghi did a good job with the piece of sh#t they had to work with. | 0neg
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This is one of the few episodes (if not the only one) with an indisputable error in its storytelling. While handling the Ralphie situation Christopher states that he has heard about Pie-O-My's death in the fire accident. This is an important detail because in this context it is quite obvious that Christopher knows from the beginning that Tony is the one who must have killed Ralphie. There is however no way Chris could have heard about the accident. Who should have told him and when? By the time he is torn out of his delirium by Tony's call nobody else was informed. Tony knows that - which makes it even worse! Hearing Christopher talk about Pie- O-My's death could therefore only lead Tony to the conclusion that Chris himself has set the fire. Given the impressively elaborate writing process as told by the writers themselves on the DVD I really wonder none of them realized the problem there. The story just doesn't work that way. Unnecessary to add that I'm a huge fan of the Sopranos. Otherwise, I certainly wouldn't care. | 0neg
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not to long after Jeff Jarrett left the WWF for good he spoke of that night . Owen Hart and him where good friends and both 2nd generation wrestlers. Jeff first remarks "I was literally pushed thru the curtain as my lifeless friends body was wheeled past me " . Debra McMichael( Steve Austin's Ex wife as well as Steve Mondo McMichael Ex wife".) <br /><br />As Owen Hart Fell, a video promo the ring was darkened, as a Blue Blazer (owen Hart Promo was played. The fall and video of owen in the ring was never showed on TV. There are a few news photos that got posted. When they came back from the video promo Jim ross was talking over a all we had was a crowd shot \., He stated that Owen Hart as The blue blazer has fallen and doesn't look good. Lawler then came back from the ring his face was ashen he told Jim that the situation was very critical paramedics where working hard to revive him. Rock And HHH where going there match in a private room when another Referee came in and told them Owen fell at first,knowing Owen Harts constantly being a prankster they thought it wasn't real. But both later stated that the look of the referee face said it all. In fact as he fell ,as mentioned in other post , he yelled for the referee and ring announcer to move. <br /><br />Brother Bret hart was a plane heading to LA to do a angle on the Tonight Show , he couldn't get any of the plane phones to work, One of the captains got a message to call home something had happened. When he landed in La Eric bishoff was there told him what had happened, and put him on a charter flight to Kansas City to the morgue, Bret even later with Owens widow Martha went up to the top of the arena where Owen was standing. Police found no foul play formerly closed as a accident .<br /><br />Most of the Information in Bret Harts book as well as the book by Martha Hart , | 0neg
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Ever since I was eight years old I have been a big wrestling fan. It didn't matter what federation I watched. WWE,WCW,USWA. To me the action is all I watched it for.<br /><br />May 23rd 1999. That was my 19 birthday. I ordered Over the Edge and I was just expecting another pay per view. But this time. I was wrong. Instead that was the night one of the best wrestlers to come out of Canada a true human being fell to his death due to a stunt gone wrong. Not much you can do to change the situation. But what happened affter Owens death made me very mad.<br /><br />Rather then ending the pay per view and doing the right thing as human beings the WWE decided to protect what comes first and that was the money by keeping the pay per view going as if Owens death never happened.<br /><br />I gotta tell you. Vince Mchmaon has made some stupid decisions in his life but this was by far the stupidest decision he ever made.<br /><br />And this crap with saying Owen would have wanted the pay pew view to keep going. Give me a break. When someone dies on a pay pew view its comon sense to stop it. Thats like a police officer shooting a robber or a mugger with a run and then just leaving the man to die so he can go home and call it a day as if the mans life never mattered.<br /><br />But no matter what happens. Owen will be missed and thanks for the memories for all the times you gave us. | 0neg
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A concept with potential, and it was fun to see these two holiday icons together, but...<br /><br />Rudolph's glowing nose didn't require the "explanation" offered in this film - much like The Force in the Star Wars films didn't need the explanation of "medichlorians in the bloodstream." But mainly, the film left me cold because of Winterbolt's over-complicated plot to destroy Santa. He's got the power to put suggestions into people's minds, so why does he do things in such a roundabout way? Breaking the magic of Rudolph's nose, framing Rudolph, threatening to melt the Frosty family...The comedically exaggerated plots of Pinky and the Brain and "Phineas and Ferb's" Dr. Doofenshmirtz (which are done that way on purpose and played for laughs) seem simple and straightforward compared to Winterbolt's, which we're expected to take somewhat seriously.<br /><br />There is a particularly (and amusingly) strange moment when a character throws her two guns at the bad guy, like boomerangs. I understand if they don't want to have guns being shot in a family film, but then why have guns in the first place? | 0neg
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Original Claymation Rudolph: Pretty good. Original Frosty cartoon: Needs a little work, but could be worse. But Frosty and Rudolph together on the Fourth of July? C'mon! Give me a BREAK!!! This was one movie that shouldn't have been made. It was bad. It didn't really go for any holiday in particular, except July 4. That made it especially bad since Frosty and Rudolph are usually associated with the Christmas season. And any movie can be ruined by too much singing. The frequent songs made this movie seem a lot longer than it really was. The movie tried mixing two familiar Chirstmastime characters with an American traditional holiday (which almost seems to "limit" it to America), too many pointless songs, and a lousy plotline. The result? A bad movie that can't really be watched at any time of year. I would suggest you forgo this movie even if you like Frosty and Rudolph. | 0neg
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Quite simply this shouldn't have been made. It's predictable and clichéd. The on screen chemistry which made the first "My Girl" so captivating is nowhere to be found here, and the acting as a whole is stilted and forced. The writing also leaves much to be desired, some of the 'memorable' lines such as "earpeircing a barbaric custom" are just shocking. Where "My Girl" provoked a genuine feelings of sadness and some genuinely funny moments, like so many sequels "My Girl 2" tries to recreate these emotions generated by the audience, and fails miserably. Maybe i'm being hard on this film because of how great the first one was, but quite honestly it insults the quality of the original with the sort of drivel this installment serves up. Surely this has to come close to "Son of the mask" as being one of the worst sequels of all time. In both cases, the old saying rings true; "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". | 0neg
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If you want to know what kind of music white people listened to in 1974, this is the movie for you. But you'll have to listen to a lot of flutes and violins, too (see my remarks on My Girl 1 for the reference).<br /><br />Indulgent admission: I approached My Girl 2 with cynicism and annoyance, having just viewed its predecessor. But as an adoptee preparing to finally set upon a search for my birthmother, My Girl 2 made me look, with its theme of searching for mother.<br /><br />Put another way, anything I liked about My Girl 2 had nothing whatsoever to do with My Girl 2, but relating to a protagonist who asks, like so many adoptees, "who's my mama"? And if there are home movies of my mom in an acting troupe, I'll be sure to make my own movie about it.<br /><br />People are listless. Movies should not be listless. My Girl 2 (like My Girl 1) is just...listless.<br /><br />Avoid unless you're a complete sap who's comforted by a series of small annoyances. | 0neg
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I think that it was just pointless to produce a second part of a movie like "My Girl". "My Girl" was a very good movie but it is ridiculous making a second part of a movie in which one of the main characters (Macaulay Culkin as Thomas J.) dies. The story was over after the first movie. I wonder why someone tried to find a way to make the story going on. That was senseless! | 0neg
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I just don't see how a Concorde-New Horizons film directed by Jim Wynorski and featuring the acting talents of Andrew Stevens and a puppet could be bad. It just boggles the mind, doesn't it?<br /><br />Well, let's make no mistake about it. "Munchie Strikes Back" is indeed a bad film. Munchie is a puppet who has been around for many centuries. For reasons not fully explained until the end of the film, he is sent to Earth to help a single mother and her son. The mom's problem (her main problem at least) is that she has a balloon payment due on her mortgage in two weeks...to the not-so-tiny tune of $20,000. Ouch. She can't come up with the money because she just got fired. OK...JUST is the key word in that sentence. What the...? Was she planning on paying it off with a single paycheck? Maybe it would've been a good idea to have spent the last several years saving up for it...ya think?<br /><br />Munchie has magical powers similar to those a genie would possess...but there isn't a limit on the number of wishes you can make! Munchie gets the boy a bunch of fancy stuff for one night but then the kid asks for it to be sent back to the mall Munchie was "borrowing" it from. The annoying furball also uses his otherworldly skills to help the boy win a baseball game by means of cheating. A baseball is hit so hard that it orbits the Earth several times. Sadly, those dumb parents watching the game don't think it's at all strange. Hmm.<br /><br />Anyway, I'd like to wrap this up because this has already drained away enough of my lifeforce as it is. You'll be truly moved by the scene where Leslie-Anne Down, playing the mother, kicks a dog which is yapping at her. Your heart will melt at her charm when she notices dollar bills fluttering down on her front yard and she wonders how it could be snowing during the summer. "Munchie Strikes Back"'s credits promised another film to follow entitled, I believe, "Munchie Hangs Ten". To date, the movie viewing public has been robbed of what would surely have been a cinematic tour de force. Heh. 1/10 | 0neg
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Terrible story, poor acting and no humour at all (apart from the final joke at the end)<br /><br />Some sort of ugly angel is sent to earth to save a boy and his mum from being thrown out of their home. Supposed to be a kiddies movie, but even they will not be amused by this terrible film | 0neg
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I saw this movie, and at times, I was unnerved believing this movie 'saw me.' Munchie sullies the 'farce' for years to come. Re-watch Star Wars, Don't-watch Munchie.<br /><br />As a responsible parent (I'm speaking to those who are parents now), I (you) would not let my (your) child ever partake of this video festival of the pseudo-occult. To insinuate Munchie is satanic, to a co-viewer, is likely to illicit a chilled 'duh.' He is fiendish, alien, rodential, and wholly malevolent - like the Bogey man made flesh, invisible to adults, tempting children with lifestyles they could never afford (without the income made possible by years of self denial and prudent stewardship). He is a peddler of easy answers, and false ideals. He is everything the morally conscious viewer is not. He is the devil's own Ron Popeil.<br /><br />I pray (I mean this literally and figuratively, with an emphasis on the former) that this movie has not made the format jump to DVD. It is my hope that this type of 'yellow film making' died an un-mourned death in the cold nights of 1994.<br /><br />Munchie also loves pizza. I forgot to mention that. It comes up a lot. | 0neg
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Michael Williams, who works for BBC, finds a somehow impressive Italian picture which gets mixed in the material of his ongoing task titled DIABOLICAL ART: A DOCUMENTARY. But since his wife's mysterious death her daughter, Emily, has been emotionally disturbed, so he goes Spoleto, where the problematic picture is, with her and her nanny, Jill. And there is a Countess, who is also a psychic, and she informs him that the picture was somehow made at the night that a young witch named Emilia was executed. Michael doesn't believe her story, but after that Emily has hysterical spasm and Jill is killed... This Italian film is, of course, almost innocently influenced by THE EXORCIST, but this one is much cheaper, much simpler,and in a sense, much dirtier. First of all, it should be said this film is full of confusion. For instance, the story shows Emily is a reincarnation of Emilia. But when Emily sees her in the flashbacks, she perceives her exclusively from a third-person's point of view. But if she is the reincarnation of Emilia, she should and must see the past from nothing but Emilia's point of view. Confusions of this kind, which the film has many, are almost exclusively based upon a problematic fact that the film is too cowardly, rather than ambivalent, to specify its own quasi-Freudian theme, namely, pre-adolescent girl's one-way incestuous wish. To make matters worse, this film also has characteristic problem (if not confusion); every character is too naive and helpless to be realistic and/or believable living human. Regarding Emily (or Emilia), she is after all a child, and one can say it is difficult to blame her mainly for her naiveness and helplessness. (And according to the Freudian theory, every girl wants to have her father's child(ren) in her own way. In this sense, Emily is not exclusively pathological; only her way of excluding other women from her father's love is problematically pathological. But, as I already mentioned, this film per se is too cowardly to be Freudian.) The problem is that adult characters are as childish and naive and helpless as Emily is. And because of this characteristic weakness even the psychic who can see almost everything cannot do anything down-to-earth, and because of the same weakness the very story of the film is ended in a badly escapist way. In addition, special effects of this film are incredibly cheap and laughable. Although Stelvio Cipriani's music is noteworthily beautiful (indeed this one is so good that it seems to be worth having it alone), the film as a whole is nothing but a cheap B-film which can disappoint even the 1970s'-Italian- horror-film-lovers. | 0neg
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This movie started out good, i felt like i was watching an adult version of Seinfeld. Much to quickly i started questioning the situations and actions of the main characters, and found no answers to why they were doing what they were doing. All the acting was superb but only a few scenes had brief moments where they were actually funny. Dan Cortese was amazing. I loved him in this role. His agent should show this movie to casting agents. Watch the first few scenes and then find something better, or else you will find yourself totally lost in this mess. I found this in a bin at a video store. It cost me two dollars and due to the rareness of this movie i feel like it was a good price. | 0neg
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A seemingly endless movie that really deserves a zero rating. The premise seems simple enough: Yentl, a girl interested in studying the Talmud, wants to go to school. But only boys are allowed to study, so after her father's death she decides to disguise herself as a boy to get in. She does and becomes close friends with Avigdor, who is to be married to a beautiful woman named Hadass. Hadass' family learns Avigdor's brother committed suicide, and the wedding is called off. Yentl, now calling herself Anschel, is then selected to marry Hadass. She does but it is never consummated. Yentl/Anschel and Avigdor go away for a few days, and Yentl/Anschel reveals her secret to him. The movie ends with Avigdor returning to (and marrying?) Hadass, and Yentl going to America to continue her studies although she will have to continue to do so in disguise.<br /><br />The plot above seems interesting at first for a movie over 2 hours long, but there are several things that ruin it. For starters, there is the constant SINGING. (I can already hear the critics shouting.) Yes, I know this is a musical so there are supposed to be lots of songs and dance numbers. But the movie could have been improved if it were directed and played without them. The songs become tedious after a while, and there isn't as much dancing as one would expect. Many of the songs are forgettable, with no real memorable lyrics, and those with any significance could easily have been substituted by a voice-over. Only one song stands out from the rest, "Papa Can You Hear Me". It is obvious that most of the others were deliberately placed so Streisand could simply have a reason to show off her vocal abilities every five to ten minutes. Chances are anyone who will see this film will already know what a superb singer and actress she is, so the songs really aren't necessary. <br /><br />Second, Streisand's makeup, which can be seen during her scenes as a man (the lipstick, enhanced lashes, and traces of blush are all obvious) makes it hard for the audience to believe in the Yentl/Anschel character, that she is actually serious, and fooling her new friends, colleagues, and even Hadass, into believing she is a man. Yet we are asked and expected to believe that very thing. There seems to be a contradiction, as her character talks, or rather sings, of how she doesn't think she can pull it off, but is surprised that everyone seems to be fooled because she is wearing men's clothing. This means that we are then expected to believe the other characters are so naive they can't see the other differences, such as her actions, which are clear giveaways. The facial differences alone cannot be included, as other characters in the film mention that some of their male relatives or friends didn't have a beard or other facial hair. Nevertheless, in the 1900s, if a woman dressed as a man, but wore as much makeup as Streisand's character did, and still tried to pass herself off as a man solely because she wore men's clothing, it would have been deemed unacceptable and caused an outrage. Chances are she would probably be forced to leave the town, or even the country. Therefore the "feminine" makeup on Streisand does not lend to the character's credibility, and only weakens the plot. If it was only applied to make Streisand look more beautiful, it should have been scrapped. <br /><br />Thirdly, when Yentl/Anschel herself reveals who she truly is toward the end, we are then asked to believe that the other characters are not as smart as Streisand's and only when they learn the "truth" do they become a little wiser. By now it becomes more and more apparent that the whole plot is so far fetched that it is nothing more than a custom-made vehicle for Streisand to fuel.<br /><br />Lastly, there are those who are fans of Streisand who will find no fault with this film, its plot, or the songs. To those I must respectfully disagree. While she has excellent vocal and acting abilities, I am not a "fan" of her style of singing. However, I have enjoyed many of her other features including musicals. There are even some songs of hers that I like, so I am not a "hater" nor have set out to bash her. I have written this review from an honest perspective, from someone who has tried their best to watch this movie - several times even - and has noted the problems within. If Streisand was interested in creating a great or even believable film, she could have done so here by not injecting her need to show off and prove how talented, beautiful and smart she is at nearly every turn. This movie does nothing more than hurt her abilities, make her appear self-absorbed, and thus turn the film into a laugh-fest unworthy of her fans or audience. | 0neg
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This might be the worst film ever made, and is possibly worth seeing for that reason alone. Streisand is laughably unbelievable as a young woman posing as a man in order to study Judaism. The soundtrack is torturous, featuring Barbara belting out some of the weakest blather ever put to film. And don't even get me started on the plot. You will actually get more chuckles out of this film than many comedies because it is soooooooo terrible. The rampant ego of Streisand, thinking she could somehow raise this stinker to Oscar heights, led to this disaster. I'm pretty sure the novelist, Isaac Bashevis Singer, hated this film and never forgave Streisand. I can't blame him. This movie is like watching a car wreck in slow motion for two hours with the soundtrack of 'The Sound of Music' being played backwards on an old turntable. It's truly that bad. I'm amazed that anyone from Streisand enjoyed this movie on the level that it was intended. | 0neg
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I know, I know, "Plan 9 from Outer Space" is the worst movie, or maybe "Manos, the Hands of Fate." But I can't get worked up over those sock-monkey movies. Of *course* they're bad. How could they be any good? But if you're talking about movies with respectable production values and bankable talent, the T. rex of all turkeys has to be "Yentl." All the treacly phoniness, all the self-absorbed asininity, that stains everything Barbra Streisand has done since 1964, reaches its culmination in this movie. From its lonely summit of awfulness, "Yentl" looks back to "A Star is Born" and forward to "The Mirror Has Two Faces." There is nothing else quite like it. What emotional undertow dragged Streisand out to make this movie I would rather not speculate, and what audience she was playing to I cannot possibly imagine, although I'll bet there's a nine in ten chance you aren't a member of it.<br /><br />Nobel Prize-winner and saintly guardian of Yiddish literature Isaac Bashevis Singer was so outraged by what Streisand did to his story that he blasted her in public for it. It is a tribute to Streisand's impenetrable vulgarity that she not only didn't commit suicide, but went on to make more awful movies. | 0neg
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My personal vision of hell is being locked in a room without the ability to close my eyes or block my ears and have this movie play for eternity on every available surface in that room. The whole notion that Streisand plays a boy/man only begins to scratch the surface of how ridiculous a premise this movie is. The single most important thing about watching any movie is the concept of "willing suspension of disbelief" . . . it is impossible to do that in this movie. | 0neg
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Barbara Streisand directs and stars in this very Jewish story.<br /><br />To have a chance at obtaining an education, Babs enthusiastically disguises herself as a boy which isn't the most difficult thing to do since she already looks like a boy, anyway. At her new school she meets many male classmates who have no trouble at all in believing she's a guy.<br /><br />Don't miss the best of many moments of unintentional humor when Babs' male friend thinks she's a man, but pins 'him' to the ground, sits on top of 'him', and looks affectionately into 'his' eyes.... *snicker*.<br /><br />Mediocre film; splashy story about nothing particularly interesting. | 0neg
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I remember when this piece of trash came out, all the newspapers were squawking about how it had taken Barbra Streisand years to get the film made. Well it couldn't have taken that many years; the play only opened in 1975, eight years previously. It made a Broadway star of the great actress Tovah Feldshuh, who probably should have been cast in the film, but NOOOOO...the Great STAR BARBRA HAD TO DO IT HER WAY. AND WITH MUSIC NO LESS! This film is a total disaster from start to finish. For one thing, Barbra was FORTY YEARS OLD when she made it and she looked every minute of it. There was no way anyone could possibly swallow her as a young girl yearning to study Torah. And then when she dresses up as a boy it gets campy. I get the impression that Streisand could not bear to be unattractive so she played around with the make-up; she is prettier as a boy than she is as a girl. And as if that is not bad enough, she gets involved with both her schoolmate Avigdor (Mandy Patinkin, whose best moment is the shot of his naked rear end) AND his fiancée (Amy Irving, who does her usual sleepwalker routine, a bit of schtick the poor woman always resorts to when the director ignores her and she does not know what she is doing). Yentl even goes so far as to marry the girl; I won't even bother to mention the "wedding night" scene.<br /><br />Then there is the music. Nine totally forgettable songs, all sung by Streisand via voice-over (presumably as a look inside her mind), and each one as intrusive and irritating as fingernails on a blackboard.<br /><br />I won't say that Streisand does not show a glimmer of promise as a director here; some of the visuals are lovely (Patinkin's backside especially), and she has a good eye for balance. The problem with this movie is that she won't get out of her own way. I did not believe her for one second in the title role; she should NEVER have added the songs, and on top of that the whole mess goes on for two hours and fifteen minutes. I was sick of the whole sorry mess after forty-five minutes.<br /><br />Awful, awful, awful. | 0neg
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(Honestly, Barbra, I know it's you who's klicking all those "NO"s on my review. 22 times?? How many people did you have to instruct to help you out here? Don't you have anything better to do, like look at yourself in the mirror all day?)<br /><br />Steven Spielberg told Barbra that this was "the best movie I've seen since 'Citizen Kane'". That pretty much says it all - and serves as a dire warning!<br /><br />What are the ingredients for a sure-fire cinematic disaster, and one that will haunt you, never letting you forget the tears of both laughter and pain? The ingredients: Barbra Streisand's face, a musical, feminism, Barbra Streisand's voice, Barbra Streisand directing, and an ultra-corny/idiotic premise.<br /><br />Hollywood is full of egomaniacs, this much we know. In fact, nearly everyone by definition has to be an egomaniac in Hollywood. Why would anyone want to act? For the "art"?!? Well, if you're dumb enough to believe what they tell you in their carefully prepared interviews
And Streisand has the biggest ego of them all! This is quite an achievement. To be surrounded by narcissistic cretins, and yet to manage to top them all remarkable.<br /><br />The movie, like all her "solo" endeavors, is an ego trip straight out of hell. Every scene Streisand is in is automatically ruined. Stillborn. But as it that weren't enough, she sings a whole bunch of Streisandy songs you know, the kind that enabled the Mariah Careys, the Celine Dions, and the Whitney Hustons of this world to poison our precious air-waves for decades now. Just for that she deserves not one but 100 South Park episodes mocking her.<br /><br />The premise, Streisand dressing up as a man to study to become a rabbi, sounds like a zany ZAZ comedy. Apart from it being a cliché, the obvious problem is that Streisand doesn't look like a woman nor does she look like a man in fact I'm not even sure she's human. The way she looks in this movie, well
it cannot be described in words. E.T. looks like a high-school jock by comparison. She looks more alien than Michael Jackson in the year 2015. She looks HORRIBLE.<br /><br />The songs. They made me shiver. Particularly "Papa Can You Hear Me Squeel Like A Demented Female Walrus In Heat?" and "Tomorrow Night I'll Prepare the Sequel, YENTL 2: THE RETURN OF THE BITCH".<br /><br />Did you know that Streisand considered having a nose-job early on in her career, but changed her mind when they told her her voice might change? Can you believe that? She should have done it! Killing two flies with one swipe, that's what it would have been.<br /><br />If you're interested in reading my biographies of Barbra Streisand and other Hollywood intellectuals, contact me by e-mail.<br /><br />SHOULD BARBRA STREISAND FINALLY GO INTO RETIREMENT? CLICK "YES" OR "NO". | 0neg
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With the exception of the sound none of the above are really criticisms for this type of no budget, (truly) independent horror film. Make up effects and gore are very good and the lead actor was effective, the lead actress although attractive needs some coaching as she was particularly poor.<br /><br />The major problem with Frightworld is it's length, at 108 minutes its half an hour too long to be effective as a slasher movie, plot wise only about ten minute of the first fifty are relevant.<br /><br />In places it is visually engaging and sometimes the lack of lighting works in the films favour. However when this is combined with the poor sound as is the case with most of the film large sections are difficult to watch.<br /><br />This could certainly be an entertaining if unoriginal "serial killer back from the dead" movie with some judicious and ruthless editing, in its current form it plays like an unfinished rough cut. | 0neg
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This movie is actually worse than most movies I've ever suffered through, and I've suffered through a lot. Absolute nonsense. It's got terrible, forced dialogue; pointless plot developments; really drawn out 'spooky imagery' scenes, which look more like a high school remedial art project than a horror movie; 5/10 at best attractive women; long, boring sex scenes involving said women (forget what you know about virgins! especially ones with lop- sided fake breasts); muttered, difficult to understand speech from some of the characters; and they actually used the masks from Killer Klowns from Outer Space during a masturbation scene, which should be a saving grace because that movie was pretty funny, but it isn't. Veden Fell is the lamest bad guy in the history of film. <br /><br />Absolutely give this one a miss. | 0neg
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This was a weird movie. It started out pretty good. A solid sound track behind flash images of gore and mayhem as our psychopath did his thing.<br /><br />Next comes his "down fall" Here i could tell I was in for a real cheesy "B" movie. Poor acting , I mean how hard is it to hold a gun and act like a cop? These guys could not. After the death scene of our psychopath we get the opening credit and the movie starts...<br /><br />From this point on it is bad acting big boobs, the occasional bucket of blood and poorly done death scenes.<br /><br />That said I gave the movie a four because in spite of its flaws it did maintain a sort of creepiness that I just could not quite shake off.<br /><br />I do not recommend this movie but I have to admit I have seem worse. | 0neg
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Very bad. Very, very bad. As a fellow who aspires to make, be in or - at least - sniff the catering table at a movie set, I find it hard to criticize independents who actually got a movie of any sort made. However, this movie ... oh dear.<br /><br />Realizing Frightworld doesn't aspire to anything more than crude exploitation (an honorable thing in itself) and to try to make it conform to more mainstream standards is a mistake. And to be fair, it is more entertaining than - say - Red Zone Cuba ... but not by much. So I won't try to critique, just let me ask throw out some observations.<br /><br />1) If gore is the point of the movie, shouldn't you be able to see it?<br /><br />2) If you have hire three sound men make sure at least one knows how to operate the equipment.<br /><br />3) In a horror movie your lead maniac must be scarier than a smurf doll. Difficult I know but really...<br /><br />4) There is a lot of talented videographers in the Buffalo/Rochester area, most you can hire really cheap. Get one who knows how to frame a scene.<br /><br />5) Just because you have someone who knows how to use After Effects and other cool programs doesn't mean he should do so every two seconds.<br /><br />6) Kudos for getting the girls to take off their tops but next time, get girls who's tops we want to see taken off.<br /><br />7) Editing should help tell the story or set a mood. At the least in this sort of movie editing should sell the gore gags. A chainsaw suddenly appearing in a characters stomach is not scary, it's sloppy.<br /><br />Some good things. Not all the acting was bad. Jack was pretty good and I liked Acid once she started fighting back. There was some neat imagery, unfortunately it was thrown up on the screen without rhyme or reason. "Acid Poptart" is a name that deserves a better movie. I like the moxie of Frightworld too. Next time, now that they have a movie of sorts under their belts, I hope all involve aspire to something better than Colman Francis. Upgrade at least Ed Wood. | 0neg
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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. | 0neg
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Don't get me wrong - I love David Suchet as Poirot. I love the series as well as the movies but enough already re: Death On The Nile. Everyone has done this one! We know who dies. We know why they die. We know who the killer is. We know how it was done. So I say enough already! Mr. Suchet could have used that awesome talent in another one of Agatha Christie's novels. I will say that the acting by all the actors was superb. The sets were terrific and very realistic. I especially liked David Soul but I was surprised at how 'awful' he looked. I hope he doesn't look that way in 'real' life! I honestly can't remember from other movies whether the very end was the same. Somehow I don't think so. I thought that was a rather brilliant touch whether or not Ms. Christie wrote it that way. I would much rather have that ending then wasting away in prison! | 0neg
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In what I can say was a theft of my time I was taken to see this movie and I must say what a horrible experience. Fay Ann Lee is a terrible actress and is unconvincing in this movie. Larryjoe76 is obviously a shill reviewer. The plot is thin to say the least, the Cantonese dialog is not funny. See this movie at your peril.<br /><br />David Tang from Shanghai Tang should be after the movie for the little or no revenue this movie will generate. The banal plot attempts to compete with other rom-coms out there, and just blends into the scenery. It was like watching paint dry. <br /><br />In short this movie was a total waste of time and space. I've seen better movies on youtube. | 0neg
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Well what I can say about this movie is that it's great to see so many Asian faces. What I didn't like about the film was that it was full of stereotypes of what typical racial characters would do in their role. The Asian girl without confidence who has to play someone else to get ahead, the white guy infatuated with Asian culture and chooses to leave his white world behind for the land of yellow and the "keeping it real" black cab driver. Plus all the coke, shanghai tang and dunkin donuts product placement was a bit too obvious. The story plot itself was fun but pretty much how I thought the story would unravel. Then again when watching romantic comedies you can't expect much but then again I would have been wanted to just be surprised at least once. The parents are the best part of the flick. | 0neg
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Like 'First Blood', this attempts to make a point about the treatment of Vietnam vets, but there really isn't much time for that in between the monotonous gunfire, burnings, stabbings, torture and explosions as an impossibly indestructible Rambo takes out half of Asia, a ton of Vietnamese soldiers, most of the Russian army, various vehicles and anything else he can point a rocket launcher at. The only woman in the middle of all these boys toys is soon bumped off, allowing the testosterone to reach dangerous levels and the script to degenerate into a succession of loud noises. Helpfully supplying a few hackneyed musical cues is Jerry Goldsmith, who carefully checks off all the clichéd themes from Russian rat-a-tat to Chinese ching-chang-chong just in case we don't quite understand who we're looking at. Stallone has a brain in his head; this empty nonsense is beneath him. | 0neg
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An offensively over-the-top action adventure,FIRST BLOOD PART II seemed to catch the mood of the US at the time of it's release in the mid-80's,with right-wing Reaganism and virulent anti-red feelings still not finished yet,though the emergence of a certain Mikhail Gorbachev in the heart of the 'Evil Empire' in Moscow would soon render these types of films redundant;even Reagan himself eventually admitted this truism.<br /><br />In that sense,we can be most grateful to 'Gorby',not for his disarmament treaties with the US,nor his policies of 'glasnost',or even his support of democracy being restored to the Eastern European countries in the former Soviet Union's backyard.No,it's the final diminution of foolish,jingoistic,bloated cold-war adventures like this.The first RAMBO film was hardly perfect,though at least was a mildly literate and adequate action thriller with a not too bad storyline.In this sequel,any sense of even the remotest conviction is instantly jettisoned for silly,senseless plotting and incident in which Rambo single-handedly takes on scores of brainlessly stereotyped Vietnamese and Russian troops to rescue American POW's ten years after the conflict ended,with the Americans on the losing side.<br /><br />Perhaps the reason why the film was a huge box-office success was to let many Americans wallow in fantasy;they may have lost the war,but there was still unfinished business at hand,and ludicrous comic-strip heroics with a robot-like hero killing virtually every red on sight,with as much hardware as possible,fulfilled such whimsically far-fetched ideals.<br /><br />This could have been entertaining on a SUPERMAN/SPIDERMAN level,but sadly everything is played absolutely straight.But that is not to say that there is no humour in the film;sadly it is virtually all of the unintentional kind.The action scenes,though technically adequate,never once carry the slightest bit of conviction or persuasiveness,because they are always placed in the most spectacularly unbelievable of contexts;namely,our hero Rambo is always unscathed (aside from a few cuts and bruises here and there) despite the tons of explosives,grenades,gunshots,etc.going around him.<br /><br />In between the mayhem,what there is of a script consists of the dullest clichés and banalities.Stallone,who co-wrote the script with James Cameron (a long way from the exciting TERMINATOR made the previous year),deliberately seems to have given the Rambo character as little to say in understandable English,and merely comes out with moronic grunts,almost as though he has invented his own brand of patois only understandable to himself.Maybe his colleague Cameron was thinking of The Terminator again with so little communication involved for the lead character! In this sense Rambo seems even less of a human than the Terminator did! The rest of the cast do little better with good actors like Charles Napier and Richard Crenna doing their admirable best with the hackneyed dialogue they are given,and Steven Berkoff hamming it up outrageously yet again with another of his Russian KGB/Red Army villain roles.Berkoff's overplaying is mildly enjoyable but not remotely menacing.How come that Sly managed to survive Berkoff's electric shock torture to kill yet more of those Red Commie scumbags? Well,credibility is never this film's strong point.It is a work of fantasy comparable with THE WIZARD OF OZ.At least that WAS meant to be a fantasy,and an immortal classic it turned out to be.This is only a classic of the most dismal,and indeed offensive,kind.And as for Sly's climactic speech...,rather hypocritical after slaughtering all those people,eh? By the way,in the same year,he also made ROCKY IV..........<br /><br />RATING:3 out of 10. | 0neg
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George P. Cosmatos' "Rambo: First Blood Part II" is pure wish-fulfillment. The United States clearly didn't win the war in Vietnam. They caused damage to this country beyond the imaginable and this movie continues the fairy story of the oh-so innocent soldiers. The only bad guys were the leaders of the nation, who made this war happen. The character of Rambo is perfect to notice this. He is extremely patriotic, bemoans that US-Americans didn't appreciate and celebrate the achievements of the single soldier, but has nothing but distrust for leading officers and politicians. Like every film that defends the war (e.g. "We Were Soldiers") also this one avoids the need to give a comprehensible reason for the engagement in South Asia. And for that matter also the reason for every single US-American soldier that was there. Instead, Rambo gets to take revenge for the wounds of a whole nation. It would have been better to work on how to deal with the memories, rather than suppressing them. "Do we get to win this time?" Yes, you do. | 0neg
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This movie is a joke and must be one of the worst movies Stallone ever made. This is a typical 80s movie where you have one man destroying the whole army by himself. "First Blood Pt. 2" is very similar to Schwarzenegger's "Commando", but there you have Arnold killing the terrorist while here you have a specific nation showed as the bad guys. This movie is a typical American anti-Soviet propaganda. True, this was the peak of the Cold War, but I'm sick of having Communists or the Nazis always being shown as the enemy. There are so many American movies that have this one thing in common. Why can't there a movie that show Americans as the enemy? Who's going to believe that one lone soldier will destroy the whole army? Do you really think that something like this would have really happened? By the looks of it, an average, brain washed American viewer certainly would. | 0neg
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Years ago, when I was a poor teenager, my best friend and my brother both had a policy that the person picking the movie should pay. And, while I would never pay to see some of the crap they took me to, I couldn't resist a free trip to the movies! That's how I came to see crap like the second Conan movie and NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN! Now, despite this being a wretched movie, it is in places entertaining to watch--in a brain dead sort of way. And, technically the stunts and camera-work are good, so this elevates my rating all the way to a 2! So why is the movie so bad? Well, unlike the first Rambo movie, this one has virtually no plot, Rambo himself only says about 3 words (other than grunts and yells), there is a needless and completely irrelevant and undeveloped "romance" and the movie is one giant (and stupid) special effect. And what STUPIFYINGLY AWFUL special effects. While 12383499143743701 bullets and rockets are shot at Rambo, none have any effect on him and almost every bullet or arrow Rambo shoots hits its mark! And, while the bad guys are using AK-47s, helicopters and rockets, in some scenes all Rambo had is a bow and arrows with what seem like nuclear-powered tips!! The scene where the one bad guy is shooting at him as he slowly and calmly launches one of these exploding arrows is particularly made for dumb viewers! It was wonderfully parodied in UHF starring Weird Al. Plus, HOT SHOTS, PART DEUX also does a funny parody of the genre--not just this stupid scene.<br /><br />All-in-all, a movie so dumb and pointless, it's almost like self-parody! | 0neg
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As an Army veteran, I was deeply offended by this film. In my opinion, it is a disgrace to those who fought in the Vietnam war. To say that the real SF soldiers I knew were offended by this crap is an understatement. If the film were presented as satire or even as a cartoon (it was), it would have been better received. But it was taken seriously my many people, especially overseas. Silly as it sounds, wherever I went in Europe in the late 80's people seemed to judge me and Americans in general by this film. Unrealistic? Hmm, let's see. A monosyllabic, muscle-bound cretin is pulled off a prison work gang to go on a secret mission to SE Asia to free some American POW's. In a running battle he kills about 500 enemy soldiers with an M-60 machine gun that never runs out of ammo and never overheats. And he never misses, running with a 32lb gun held up with one arm. I could go on, but I'm getting a headache. I gave this a 2/10 only because it's slightly better than Rambo III. | 0neg
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I remember I loved this movie when it came out. I was 12 years old, had a Commodore 64 and loved to play Rambo on it. I was therefore really thrilled when I got to buy this movie really cheap. I put it in my VCR and started up: Man this movie is really bad! Sylvester Stallone says like 3 words in the entire movie (except for that awful sentimental speech at the end), and has the same expression on his face all the way. And that stupid love thing in the middle, it's just so amazingly predictable. I just ended up fast forwarding the entire thing and went to exchange the movie for something else. | 0neg
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I don't see much reason to get into this movie in much detail. Sylvester Stallone is once again John Rambo, author and survivor of "A Season in Hell", recruited from prison by his only friend, Major Richard Crenna, to secretly return to Vietnam, take photos of the American prisoners believed to be still held in horrible camps, and return without engaging the enemy.<br /><br />Fat chance. What if he actually DID nothing more than sneak in, take pics, and sneak out? Who would come to see the movie? <br /><br />It's essentially a celebration of Stallone's muscles. Preparing for his mission, we see his well-oiled muscles bulging. (They are oiled and bulging throughout.) There is the ritual strapping on of black leather, ugly guns, and even uglier knives. The black guns are cleaned, assembled with loud clacks, and almost as oiled as Stallone's muscles. The bow is tested and, yes, it has enough poundage to drive a bolt through an enemy's forehead. The knife is sharpened with slick snicks.<br /><br />Stallone and one of his POWs are betrayed by one or two of the suits from Washington, cynical politicians who, you can bet, were never even in a fist fight in grammar school. No guts, you know? Just sit around with their feet on the desk and drink foreign beer.<br /><br />The movie does what it set out to do, but what it set out to do is meretricious. It deliberately cashes in on the myth popular in the mid-1980s that there were uncountable numbers of MIAs quietly kept in wretched camps by the North Vietnamese. The bumper stickers were ubiquitous. (Free Our MIAs.) Why would they keep them? It was never quite reasoned out but perhaps to turn the POWs into a slave labor force -- in a country that has absolutely no resource other than labor. Or maybe for their propaganda value as an instrument to humiliate the United States -- a propaganda weapon that the Vietnamese kept secret from the world.<br /><br />As a captive, Rambo is treated in a Medieval fashion by the North Vietnamese. Dipped to his neck in pig excrement and then hauled out of it by his wrists, his muscles still on display. Then, not content with subhuman Vietnamese, a Russian officer is brought in to play the part of the Gestapo officer -- "Vee haff vays of MAKING you remember." A high-tech type, the Russian uses psychology and electricity, not just pig dump.<br /><br />Rambo returns and declares that he intends to drift aimlessly until "this country loves us as much as we love it," bringing up another myth that Vets returning from Vietnam were uniformly spat upon and cursed, which is why I guess we elected so many to the Congress and appointed others to high-echelon positions. The last three losing presidential candidates were among that despised group. At least Rambo's aimless drifting left room open for a sequel, which arrived apace.<br /><br />The action movies with Schwarzenegger and Willis and others were leavened by wisecracks but Rambo is humorless. It marches dully through it's phantasmal ideological swamp, killing without mercy, barely speaking, barely able to speak. To speak is a sign of weakness. | 0neg
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While the original First Blood had its far-fetched moments, it was at least exciting in parts. In Rambo: First Blood, Part II the emphasis is shifted very much onto comic-book action. Plausibility is totally rejected; logic nose-dives; Stallone becomes so impregnable that there can be no doubt he will succeed in his mission. Just like any other wish-fulfilment actioner of that time (e.g. Invasion USA, Commando, Red Scorpion), Rambo: First Blood, Part II cancels out its own opportunities for real excitement by presenting a hero too invulnerable to fear for. If you can tell from the word go that Rambo is going to wipe out hundreds of enemy soldiers, what is left to get excited about?<br /><br />Imprisoned after the events of the first movie, John J Rambo (Sylvester Stallone) is offered a pardon if he will join a covert operation in the Far East. The year is 1985, and a mission is being arranged to find out if there are any American PoWs still trapped in the jungles of Vietnam. Rambo is encouraged to take the job by his old mentor Colonel Trautman (Richard Crenna), but the assignment is actually the brainchild of a government outfit fronted by Marshall Murdock (Charles Napier). Rambo's job is merely to head for a prison camp in the jungle and check out if it contains any American PoWs if it doesn't, he is to rendezvous with a chopper; if it does, he is to get photographic evidence of their existence so that they can be rescued at a later date. Aiding him in his quest is a lady soldier with local knowledge, the beautiful and resourceful Co Bao (Julia Nickson). Sure enough, Rambo discovers that there are PoWs in the camp, but he exceeds his orders by rescuing one of them
when he reaches the rendezvous point, the rescue chopper abandons him on the orders of Murdock who, it seems, doesn't really want to find any PoWs because of the political and military implications. Rambo is captured by the enemy and tortured, but following an explosive escape he sets out to free the PoWs and get his revenge on the treacherous Murdock.<br /><br />The few good points of the film come from Jack Cardiff's polished photography, Jerry Goldsmith's exhilarating score, and the sheer professionalism of the stunt team in performing various action antics. Beyond these scant pickings, the film is a failure. The actors are reduced to macho posturing, the plot rings false, the action sequences are soulless and suspenseless, the dialogue is absurd
even the violence becomes numbingly predictable. At the time of its release America was under the presidency of Ronald Reagan, a man with simplistic and near-hysterical anti-communist sentiments. For this reason, contemporary audiences lapped up this Commie-bashing shooting-fest as if it was the greatest movie of all-time, transforming it into an undeserved box office success. Thankfully times have changed nowadays we can look upon it as a simple-minded action flick with a ludicrously high body count, ludicrously dumb politics, and a ludicrous hero. | 0neg
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The ghost of the Vietnam war has haunted the American psyche for thirty years now. If not because of the fact that tens of thousands of American soldiers went MIA in Vietnam, or the manner in which those who returned were treated, then because it was the first war that America could be said to have lost. Many men came home from the war a shadow of their former selves, and the original First Blood managed to provide a small insight into their problems as they attempted to rotate back into the world, as the saying goes. First Blood Part II, on the other hand, is little more than a fist-pumping mess that goes to illustrate how sore America can be, both in victory and defeat. Stallone puts in another sluggish performance as the titular Special Forces commando, while Richard Crenna attempts to hold up the serious actor quotient. Where it all comes undone is in the script, which didn't do any better when it was called Missing In Action and starred Chuck Norris. What little semblance of logic there was in the original is now gone, as the filmmakers decide to paint a big S on Rambo's massive chest.<br /><br />The film picks up a little while after the end of First Blood. The film, that is - the novel didn't allow for the possibility of sequels. In this mediocre follow-up, Rambo has been put to work at what appears to be some sort of open-air mine. As he is breaking rocks and working up a sweat, a prison guard pulls him away to go and have a chat with Colonel Trautman, who advises him that his government is willing to offer him an early release if he goes on a covert mission. Rambo, never one to back down from a hard day's violent work, accepts, and is promptly shipped off to a covert base in what appears to be Cambodia or Thailand (I forget which). From there, he is commissioned to seek out a camp where American MIAs are supposedly being held, and photograph them. His mission quite clearly specifies that he is not to make any attempt to secure their release. Rambo being Rambo, however, has other ideas in spite of their possible political implications.<br /><br />Of course, things go somewhat awry when it turns out that the people commissioning Rambo's work have more interest in making sure no American MIAs are found. It is the age-old conspiracy theory, and makes no apologies for exploiting the plight of many an American family that was left without a son during the ten years that the official Vietnam war had been raging for. Of course, with the Jingoism that was inherent in American society during the 1980s, they could not help but work in a plot tangent about the Vietnamese army being in bed with what appears to be a single battalion of Russians. Together, the two antagonists attempt to extract what information they can from Rambo, but it backfires upon them in an orgy of bullets, arrows, rockets, and destruction. About the only thing missing is the moment when Rambo drinks from a grail-like chalice and declares himself invincible.<br /><br />To be honest, First Blood Part II is a well-photographed, and well-choreographed, action spectacle. The hand-to-hand combat with the larger Russian commander is one of the few battles in the film that has any dramatic tension whatsoever. The rest is simply a case of the lead actor and the director building a fantasy for Americans to pump their fist to. Fortunately, this fad of America über alles action films soon died down when more introspective and intelligent war films such as Platoon began doing the rounds. Some of the kills shown here are quite creative, despite all the problems. The Vietnamese commander meets an end that many an action film villain would envy. The Russian commander bites it in a manner that is as spectacular as it is ridiculous. Only in a 1980s action film would one see a LAW being used from inside a helicopter. Sure, there have been action film clichés rooted in contradictions of fact, but never this ridiculous before.<br /><br />I gave Rambo: First Blood Part II a one out of ten. It is so bad it is ridiculous, and so ridiculous that it is often funny. One doesn't even need to have served in the military to know how stupid some of the action sequences are. The only risk it takes is in trying to make a stupid political statement with what is a heartbreaking subject for those directly involved. Keep the tongue firmly in the cheek, and it might be watchable. | 0neg
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I think it's time John Rambo move on with his life and try to put Vietnam behind him. This series is getting old and Rambo is no longer a solider but a cold blooded killer. Ever time he turns up on the screen someone dies. Vietnam was not a fun place to be and frankly I am tired of Hollywood making it seem like it was. This is not the worst of the films concerning Vietnam, that honor goes to John Waynes Green Berets. In any case John Rambo carrying around a 50 cal Machine Gun taking on what seems to be half of the Viet Cong army plus a good many Russians is an insult to watch. What is worse is Rambos cheesy speech at the end...Please!! Oh yeah I heard they are making another one... | 0neg
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By rights, there should never have been a "First Blood Part II". The original script for "First Blood" had John Rambo committing suicide at the end of the film, but this was changed to allow him to live, not because the producers wanted to make a sequel but because test audiences found the original ending too depressing. Nevertheless, someone obviously thought that the character was too good to waste, because he ended up as the hero of two more films in the eighties, plus the recently released fourth instalment.<br /><br />The official title of this film was "Rambo: First Blood Part II", but it is more commonly known simply as "Rambo". It starts with the title character in jail, where he is presumably expiating the crimes he committed in "First Blood", although this is never made too explicit. He is removed from prison by his former commanding officer, Colonel Trautman, for a secret mission. Rambo is to return to Vietnam to investigate reports that American POWs are still being held captive by the Communist regime. He is under strict instructions not to attempt to rescue any prisoners or to engage the enemy; his is to be simply a fact-finding mission.<br /><br />What Rambo does not realise is that he is being set up, not by Trautman, who is portrayed as brave, honourable and incorruptible, but by the organiser of the mission, a military bureaucrat named Murdock. Murdock intends that the mission will prove that there are no American prisoners in Vietnam, partly because that will improve relationships between the American and Vietnamese governments, partly because it will make his own life easier. Unfortunately for Murdock, Rambo discovers that not only are Americans still being held prisoner, they are also being kept in hellish conditions. Of course, he is far too much of a hero to leave them to their fate, and tries to rescue them. The rest of the film is more or less one long battle between Rambo and a few allies (including a beautiful Vietnamese girl) and the evil commie soldiers and their Russian allies. Most of the evil commies, of course, end up dead, although I was surprised to learn from your "trivia" section that the total death toll was as low as 67. At times it seemed as though Rambo was trying to wipe out the entire Vietnamese army.<br /><br />The tone of this film is very different from the first. In "First Blood" Rambo was unquestionably a criminal, even though his responsibility for his crimes was lessened by severe provocation and by his mental instability. In "Rambo" he is a bona fide all-American hero. A few years earlier the director, George Pan Cosmatos, had made "The Cassandra Crossing", a biased piece of left-wing anti-American propaganda. Cosmatos, however, was nothing if not versatile, and "Rambo" proves that he could also turn his hand to biased right-wing pro-American propaganda. The one thing the two films have in common is that both are laughably bad.<br /><br />"First Blood" had its faults, but it also had its virtues. Its stance, that the anti-war movement was partly to blame for the problems faced by Vietnam vets in readjusting to civilian life, was a controversial one, but at least the film was trying to make a statement about war, social attitudes to war, and the roots of violence in society. "Rambo", by contrast, has very few virtues, except that the action sequences are well enough done to please those who like that sort of thing. It is essentially a sort of jingoistic revenge fantasy for those Americans who were still sore about the Vietnam war. Rambo re-fights the war single-handed, and this time the right side wins. Take that, Charlie Cong! <br /><br />By this point, no doubt, the film's admirers (and there seem to be plenty- more than 2,000 voters have already given it ten stars) will have concluded that I am a liberal commie-loving pinko. Far from it- in fact, I have always despised Communism as a pernicious ideology. What I dislike about the film is not its politics but its lack of subtlety and its suggestion that the solution to all problems, including ideological disputes, is to go in with all guns blazing and to try and kill as many people as possible. It makes no attempt to understand the political complexities of South-East Asia or why not everyone in the region was pro-American. For all its anti-Communism, the film is the sort of moronic sledgehammer propaganda that the Communists were very good at churning out themselves- except that they attributed all the world's problems to Capitalism, or Imperialism, or Revisionism, or whatever other ism they had taken a dislike to. Compared to "Rambo", "The Green Berets" was a masterly piece of political analysis. 3/10 | 0neg
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The summary pretty much sums it all up. This is nowhere near as good as the original. With a script co-written by both Stallone and James Cameron (at the same time he was also writing Aliens). Most of the action was written by Cameron and the political aspects were written by Stallone.<br /><br />Sly was in the best condition physically as he was making this and Rocky 4 and he does look in great shape or jacked up to the eyeballs on steroids, depending on your own viewpoint or opinion.<br /><br />Rambo starts off in prison and is visited by Colonel Trautman who asks him to go on a special mission that could earn him a Presidential pardon. He eventually agrees and goes off to the briefing camp run by Charles Napier playing a Washington suit trying to pass himself off as former ex-forces to placate Rambo.<br /><br />The mission is to find out if there are any missing POWs still alive in camps in Vietnam. Rambo was chosen as the camp he was checking was somewhere he had previously been a prisoner himself. He is told it's not a rescue mission and he is there to take recon photos only.<br /><br />After a bad attempt at parachuting from a plane he loses most of his kit, meets his contact (who turns out to be a cute woman) and travels down river with pirates to the camp.<br /><br />He finds there are still prisoners and rescues one. As the 3 flee from half the Vietnamese Army on their river boat they are betrayed by the pirates but Rambo kills them all and they are forced to carry on to the pick-up point on foot after their boat is rammed and blown up with Rambo almost on board.<br /><br />Rambo is betrayed again and abandoned as Napier orders the recall of the rescue helicopter. It is clear as Trautman returns to base to berate him that no survivors were expected to be found.<br /><br />Steven Berkoff turns up as a Russian Spetznatz Colonel and Rambo is tortured and eventually escapes only to be pursued by more Vietnamese troops and Spetznatz. Killing many of them, Rambo finally steals a chopper and rescues most of the prisoners to return to his base.<br /><br />He resists the urge to kill Napier for abandoning him but destroys the Ops Centre.<br /><br />A weak plot and very weak ending as Rambo walks off into the sunset as a free man. | 0neg
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Usually, any film with Sylvester Stallone is usually going to suck ass. Rambo: First Blood Part II was no exception to this. The only movies that Sylvester Stallone were in that were good were Rocky and First Blood. This film is extreamly unrealistic, and boring. It has action, but not very good action. I didn't enjoy watching it, and I would never ever watch this again. No wonder why it won the Razzie Award for Worst Picture. I would give this a 3/10, the only reason why it got the 3 was because it had somewhat good action, but not good enough. | 0neg
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-me and my sister have right now watch that movie. we have laugh to the deaf. can u imagine on covers there is nomination for Oscar?? --first, musician have mix about 4-5 different style of music... and the music is not synchronized with the scenes and the character moves...<br /><br />---main character Silvester do not fit in there. he look like Mexican Tarzan.<br /><br />----Russian soldiers are everything but not Russian faces :-) -----ok, the main points: 1. airplane called charter painted in black...<br /><br />2. what is an idea when Rambo go to jump from the airplane, but he stuck? rope mix 3. a Girl? the best scene is when she dies. She means a lot to him. he knows her for ages? he cries for her, ... o my god samurai 4. how many arrows is he got? his arrow bag is always full of the arrows? i didn't notice a scene where he collect them - but i have seen the scene where arrow stay in the Vietnam solder head - that is very important 5. how many rockets helicopter can hold??? (real one) i have seen 4. but Rambos have hit about 20 of them.<br /><br />6. the main part. what the Russian special army helicopters do in Vietnam????????? after the war? 7. first scene when he enter into Vietnam's camp... his first idea was to liberate the refuge who is standing on the tree on the open space' wow, what an idea than again: 1. with the knife u can cut the iron wire? maybe only made in Vietnam? 2. mortar - using for hit one running man? o my god, u Americans really need to learn about the weapons! do u know how much it takes to calibrate the mortar (i think writer have been watching to much movies from II world war) | 0neg
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Growing up with the Beast Wars transformers, I wasn't very familiar with the original Transformers, and now that I have seen the awesome movie, and now that I have seen the older cartoon on which it's based, I have to say I like the original cartoon and the live action movie more than Beast Wars.<br /><br />Not that I don't like the BW characters, I just think that characters like Optimus Prime are better than Optimus Primal.<br /><br />I mean, "AUTOBOTS TRANSFORM AND ROLL OUT!" sounds a lot better than "MAXIMALS MAXIMIZE!" The voice of the original Optimus Prime still makes me a strong believer that he's a real commander, more so than Optimus Primal.<br /><br />Besides, Powermaster Optimus Prime is a lot more powerful than Optimal Optimus. Just look on the web! <br /><br />Megatron in the BW character seemed more like a humorous version of the more evil version of him in the original series.<br /><br />Besides what's cooler, robots changing into animals or robots changing into vehicles and spaceships? Gimme the original Transformers any day over Beast Wars! | 0neg
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Beast Wars is a show that is over-hyped, overpraised and overrated. Let's meet the characters of this obnoxious show whose creators must have been on acid to try and make a show like this.<br /><br />Cheetor- Seriously, they need to have censor bars on this guy. How come he dosen't creep out the viewers having the same voice as baby Taz? (at least Razzoff from Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc is voiced by Slip & Slide) Action Blast- If you want a line of show that suck, get G4 Tranceformers Cybertron- A show that should go down in a toilet. Good Job Creators (Sarcasm) Show it self-Retarded & boring (at least the Super Mario games are better) This show had a lot of followers sayin' bring it back, but I believe that it was cancelled for its own good. | 0neg
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The actors did a really good job playing their roles--particularly the mom. However, as the movie progressed I found I was watching it more for their acting and not because I cared in the least for the people. And, at times, I felt irritated by the irresponsible and hands-off approach to parenting displayed again and again. The daughter is a 17 year-old shallow skank whose main ambition in life is bedding famous men and becoming a dancing nyphette (complete with lots of "booty shaking"). The son is a guy with low self-esteem that seems very desperate for a relationship and friends--so much that he throws a drug party late in the film. The husband and wife are both bored, but rather than put energy into their stale relationship would rather seek out new partners (though the wife picks poorly, as the man she "throws herself at" happens to be gay---OOPS!). I just felt that ALL the characters needed to grow up and had a hard time caring for such shallow jerks. I think the author's attempt was to demonstrate the utter banality and hollowness of the capitalist system. However, given that these characters are NOT typical of the average western family, it seems disingenuous. | 0neg
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The plot it's not so original. If someone saw "L'ultimo Bacio" there's nothing new. A wealthy family in Rome living everyday life that's is boring and false, with everyone asking to others what they think about them. Really boring after an half of hour because it's simple to understand where the story is going to finish. This because it's simple to see the moralistic view of Muccino in this movie, so even the hardest parts seem normal. To summarise in the first 2 minutes of the movie it would be enough and the aim of the movie were already said. the family saw from a 30 years old, i don't like to see movie that want to show the reality but for be coherent to his thoughts has to push more than the normal the situations. Really good how Muccino put the camera in the right place moving with the carathers and it's the only reason that bring me not sleeping in the cinema though always in the movie scream from the begining. Perhaps it could be good to see the family how they are in reality and not put the blame to something out of it. Morante was intense and great as usual but unfortunatly on a bad movie! | 0neg
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The film starts with a voice over telling the audience where they are, and who the characters are. And that is the moment i started to dislike the movie. With all the endless possibilities any film director have in hand, i really find it a very easy and cheap solution to express the situation with a voice over telling everything. I actually believe voice overs are betrayals to the film making concept.<br /><br />I hate to hear from a voice over saying where we are, which date we are at, and especially what the characters feel and think. I believe that a director has to find a visual way to transmit the feelings and the thoughts of the characters to the audience. <br /><br />But after the bad influencing intro, a very striking movie begins and keeps going for a fairly long enough time. The lives of a middle class family and all the members individually are depicted in a perfect realistic way. I think the director has a talent for capturing real life situations. For example, a father who has to make his private calls from the bathroom might seem abnormal at first, but life itself leads us some situations which might seem abnormal but also very normal as well. I think the director is a very good observer about real life.<br /><br />But that is it. After a while the realism in the movie begins to sacrifice the story-telling. I really felt like I'm having a big headache because of the non-stop talking characters. It was as if the actors and actresses were given the subject and were allowed to improvise the dialogs. It is realistic really, but characters always asking "really, is that so" etc. to each other, or characters saying "no" or "are you listening to me," ten times when saying it only once is just enough causes me to have a headache.<br /><br />I also think the play practicing and book reading scenes are more then they should be. I understand that the play and the book in the movie are very much related to the plot, but i think the director has missed the point where he should stop showing these scenes. | 0neg
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"Look, I know this may suck right now, but pain is temporary, film is forever. Whatever you do right now is burned into celluloid for all time and for thousands of years to come." Robert De Niro<br /><br />This was initially a film for Steven Spielberg, the director hiring several screenwriters to adjust the screenplay so that it more suited his themes. And so we have a dysfunctional family that is threatened by a deranged monster in the form of a recently released from prison Robert De Niro. Like "Jurassic Park", "Poltergeist" and "War of the Worlds", the dysfunctional family bands together to defeat the beast, the beast being the creation of the father, a lawyer who failed to defend De Niro during his trial. <br /><br />In typical Spielberg fashion, the father kills the monster that undermines the family and is then promptly absolved of his sins. Like Oscar Schindler, Robin Williams, Sam Niel, Tom Cruise and virtually every "daddy" figure in Spielberg land, the father reclaims his paternal duty in the kind of bittersweet coda that Spielberg so enjoys.<br /><br />But Spielberg eventually abandoned the picture and the project was instead turned over to Martin Scorsese, who at the time was seeking to try his hand at more commercial fare. The result is arguably the worst film in Scorsese's filmography, and, ironically, his most illuminating.<br /><br />An artist's failures or misfires are often very revealing, exposing the inner workings of their art. When the story doesn't work, the characters don't connect or the images don't sear, we find ourselves left with a kind of inner core. This the remaining carcass- is what the director's cinema is about.<br /><br />Now "Cape Fear" is an impersonal film, so we won't find any thematic connections to the rest of Scorsese's filmography ("You already sacrificed me!" De Niro yells, but the films themes of Catholic redemption are cookie cutter). What the film does, though, is expose the kind of language that his filmography hinges on. Watch how Scorsese's camera desperately whips back and forth, how he zooms frantically onto doorknobs and windows in an attempt to force tension and how his characters are all loud and screaming for attention. But more importantly, watch how the film makes no spatial sense. A showdown on a boat at the end of the film takes place on an obvious sound-stage, a street parade is claustrophobic and takes place within no larger context and the family's house doesn't seem to exist anywhere in particular. There is simply no geographical sense to anything in the picture, Scorsese unable to film space or create any kind of spatial environment. <br /><br />The reason for this is that Scorsese's camera always has to be bound, or intimately tethered, to his central character. For the world around the character to make sense, his camera has to be focused on the character. Resnais can take you around a French Hotel, Welles and Hitchcock can dance you down a street and up a building, Cameron can give you a tour of the Titanic, Scott can recreate an entire future cityscape, Lucas can give you an alien desert planet, and most other directors can create a sense of space by textbook "close up-mid shot-wide shot" combinations, but Scorsese can't do this. There's no poetry, no sense of tangible space in his films. He's all about the character. You break that tether, you leave that boxing ring, that taxi cab, you look away from De Niro, and everything collapses. He simply cannot break away from this very documentarian style of shooting, which, in a way, is a prerequisite for action film-making.<br /><br />Scorsese tried to rectify this problem with "Gangs of New York", where the space and the sets become the central character, but even this self consciously spatial experiment gets sabotaged by the magnetism of Daniel Day Lewis, the actor drawing Scorsese's camera inexorably toward him like a moth to a bulb.<br /><br />5/10 Even as a generic B-movie, this is an ugly, vulgar looking film. Look at the matte paintings, the inept attempts at tension, the silly rotorscoped special effects and hokey fistfight showdown. Still, we have Robert De Niro to pick up the slack. De Niro, who gives his body over to Scorsese like a tattooed Christ, gives the film its only great scene. In an improvised romantic sequence with young a Juliette Lewis, he sticks his thumb into her mouth and kisses her. A kind of symbolic rape, the girl runs away, both aroused and repelled by this man's interest.<br /><br />But De Niro's performance, so deliciously over the top, simply can't be imitated by Scorsese. You'd need the operatic tone and the baroque visuals of someone like De Palma to make this work. But Scorsese? Nope.<br /><br />Worth one viewing. | 0neg
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I think we all begin a lot of reviews with, "This could've made a GREAT movie." A demented ex-con freshly sprung, a tidy suburban family his target. Revenge, retribution, manipulation. Marty's usual laying on of the Karo syrup. But unfortunately somewhere in Universal's high-rise a memorandum came down: everyone ham it up.<br /><br />Nolte only speaks with eyebrows raised, Lange bitches her way through cigarettes, Lewis "Ohmagod's!" her way though her scenes, and Bobby D...well, he's on a whole other magic carpet. Affecting some sort of Cajun/Huckleberry Hound accent hybrid, he chomps fat cigars and cackles at random atrocities such as "Problem Child". And I want you to imagine the accent mentioned above. Now imagine it spouting brain-clanging religious rhetoric at top volume like he swallowed six bibles, and you have De Niro's schtick here. Most distracting of all, though, is his most OVERDONE use of the "De Niro face" he's so lampooned for. Eyes squinting, forehead crinkled, lips curled. Crimany, Bob, you looked like Plastic Man.<br /><br />The story apparently began off-screen 14 years earlier, when Nolte was unable to spare De Niro time in the bighouse for various assaults. Upon release, he feels Nolte's misrep of him back then warrants the terrorizing of he and his kin. And we're supposed to give De Niro's character a slight pass because Nolte withheld information that might've shortened his sentence. De Niro being one of these criminals who, despite being guilty of unspeakable acts, feels his lack of freedom justifies continuing such acts on the outside. Mmm-kay.<br /><br />He goes after Notle's near-mistress (in a scene some may want to turn away from), his wife, his daughter, the family dog, ya know. Which is one of the shortcomings of Wesley Strick's screenplay: utter predictability. As each of De Niro's harassments becomes more gruesome, you can pretty much call the rest of the action before it happens. Strick isn't to be totally discredited, as he manages a few compelling dialogue-driven moments (De Niro and Lewis' seedy exchange in an empty theater is the film's best scene), but mostly it's all over-cranked. Scorsese's cartoonish photographic approach comes off as forced, not to mention the HORRIBLY outdated re-worked Bernard Hermann score (I kept waiting for the Wolf Man to show up with a genetically enlarged tarantula).<br /><br />Thus we arrive at the comedic portion of the flick. Unintentionally comedic, that is. You know those scenes where something graphically horrific is happening, but you can't help but snicker out of sight of others? You'll do it here. Nolte and Lange squawking about infidelity, De Niro's thumb-flirting, he cross-dressing, and a kitchen slip on a certain substance that has to be seen to believed. And Bob's infernal, incessant, CONSTANT, mind-damaging, no-end-in sight blowhard ramblings of all the "philosophy" he disovered in prison. I wanted him killed to shut him up more than to save this annoying family.<br /><br />I always hate to borrow thoughts from other reviewers, but here it's necessary. This really *is* Scorsese's version of Freddy Krueger. The manner in which De Niro relishes, speaks, stalks, withstands pain, right down to his one-liners, is vintage Freddy. Upon being scalded by a pot of thrown water: "You trying' to offer sumpin' hot?" Please. And that's just one example.<br /><br />Unless you were a fan of the original 1962 flick and want a thrill out of seeing Balsam, Peck, and Mitchum nearly 30 years later (or want a serious head-shaking film experience), avoid a trip to the Cape. | 0neg
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I really don't want to compare Martin Scorsese's Cape Fear to the classic 1962 Cape Fear film, but I can't help it. Not only am I a huge fan of the Robert Mitchum and Gregory Peck starred Cape Fear, but when Scorsese includes scenes right out of the previous film (Cady taking the keys out of the ignition, dog dying) and even using Bernard Herrmann's score throughout the entire film, he's not giving me a lot of opportunities to not make a comparison as I can't help but think of the classic Cape Fear nearly every scene. When comparing Scorsese's version of Cape Fear to the classic version, the remake comes out destroyed by the classic; but even when taking the film by itself, it's still bad.<br /><br />Now Scorsese and screenwriter Wesley Strick didn't just remake the 1962 Cape Fear scene for scene, they tried to do things differently. Unfortunately this is one of the film's problems. Gone is the original crazy and animal-like Max Cady who is out for personal revenge, the Max Cady in the 1991 version is a religious fanatic out to "save" Sam Bowden and who is in touch with his feminine side (his words, not mine). Also gone is the stand-up and strong Sam Bowden seen in the classic Cape Fear film, the Sam found in the 1991 remake is very goofy, Magoo, distrustful, and very unlikable. Even Mrs. Bowden is a completely different character - she's crazier than Max Cady is! The overall story has also been changed around - Sam didn't testify against Cady in court to put him in jail like in the classic version, Sam is now Cady's ex-lawyer who Cady suspects of not doing all he could to keep him out of jail and is out to "save" him.<br /><br />The overall story has been changed, and I don't hold too much against it, but the overall script is also weak all around. Other sub-plots have been thrown into the mix that not only distract from the bigger picture, they are also just poorly written. The film also includes a few frankly absurd scenes and is filled with apathetic and even ridiculous lines that you can't take the least bit seriously. These aspects take away from the dangerous and thrilling nature that the film is supposed to have, but they have some help in this department as well.<br /><br />Now the classic version of Cape Fear was extraordinarily filmed with brilliant lighting and a powerfully effective suggestive subtlety combined with a barefaced brutality that delivered thrills when the film called for it and a sense of danger throughout its entirety. However, Scorsese is unable to do any of this in his Cape Fear, giving the film a cookie-cutter early 1990s look, no sense of danger, no suspenseful scenes, and little style (unless you count animating fire and the skyline style). Yeah, there is some gruesome violence and some effort was put in to make this Cape Fear bigger than the original, but it ends up empty and all shock but no awe.<br /><br />If all that wasn't enough, the acting isn't great either. Robert De Niro (being somehow nominated for an Academy Award for his performance) starts off alright as Max Cady, but he gets progressively worse until he begins to get nothing but laughs instead of scares by the end of the film. The opposite thing happens for Jessica Lange and her performance of Mrs. Bowden, going from overacting for most of the film to giving a convincing display of fear and desperation towards the end. As Sam Bowden, Nick Nolte stays the same throughout the whole film: beige. Juliette Lewis (who also reeled in an Academy Award nomination) is decent enough in her role as Danielle Bowden, but she's called upon to play a real stupid character and it's hard to really like what we see on screen from her.<br /><br />This film seems to be often counted as one of the few good remakes, and I can't figure out why. I wanted to like it; I really did - I mean, if there's going to be a remake of Cape Fear I'd rather like that one too - but I just couldn't. Containing nothing to be great on its own and being crushed by the unavoidable comparison to the original Cape Fear, I found Martin Scorsese's Cape Fear to be a very bad film indeed. The best things about the film are Robert Mitchum and Gregory Peck in their supporting roles - go figure. | 0neg
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One of Scorsese's worst. An average thriller; the only thing to recommend it is De Niro playing the psycho. The finale is typically of this genre i.e. over-the-top, with yet another almost invincible, immune-to-pain villain. I didn't like the 60s original, and this version wasn't much of an improvement on it. I have no idea why Scorsese wasted his time on a remake. Then again, considering how bad his recent movies have been (I'm referring to his dull Buddhist movie and all the ones with his new favourite actress, the blond girl Di Caprio) this isn't even that bad by comparison. And considering Spielberg wanted to do the remake... could have been far worse. | 0neg
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I'm surprised this movie is rated so highly, although if I were to go with typical grade scale 71 is a c- or d so perhaps that's all right but this movie was just a typical thriller except boringly slow and unrealistic. Not that a typical thriller is realistic but this one seemed to be trying to, and yet the woman who got rapped didn't press charges because she didn't want to be cross examined in a court even though she would be putting the man who broke her arm beat the crap out of her and raped her away for life not but also protecting the lawyer whom she had feelings for and his family not just random people she didn't even know. There were other similar problems with the movie which would have been all right if there was some kind of moral to take away from the movie but the few moral questions like whether it was right to try to kill/beat Kady before he did anything illegal were presented a little one sided since Kady ended up being just a crazed bastard bent on revenge so sure the lawyer was justified in protecting his family since waiting for Kady to actually rape his daughter so he could do something legally about it would be a bit absurd. So now I've just waisted more of my life for this stupid movie so please don't see it so at least your life won't be waisted and that way my 2 1/2 hours or so has meant something. | 0neg
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While I can't deny that his movies are often entertaining, I have always personally felt that Martin Scorsese is just a little overrated in his abilities. His use of flashy stylistics in a good number of his movies seems to scream "Look at me, aren't I an imaginative director?". His best film that I have seen is the one with the least added flourishes, the superlative "Raging Bull".<br /><br />For this remake it appears it was business as usual, though. The dull film stock to convey a 1950's setting was so bland as to be a distraction in itself. The melodramatic close-ups combined with the sub-par imitation of the classic "Psycho" score are more likely to provoke smirks of derision than a sense of atmospheric terror. The score for "Psycho" was brilliantly unnerving, this 'homage' just sounds shrill and annoying. Even the cast, who can be decent at times, deliver histrionic performances that just scream 'caricature'; the notable exception to this being an intelligent turn by Lewis as the impressionable teenage daughter of the Bowden family.<br /><br />The worst acting offender here is surprisingly De Niro. Sure, he looks suitably menacing but as soon as he opens his mouth that aura just drains away. Now I'm no expert on American accents, me originally coming from near Manchester in England an' all, but surely he could've come up with a more convincing Southern drawl than that? Being the gifted physical actor he is, he almost overcomes this fatal flaw, but not quite. It was disconcerting for me, as a De Niro fan, to be wishing he was off screen, rather than rapt at his performance.<br /><br />(POSSIBLE SPOILERS.)<br /><br />The over-the-top style of the whole movie extends to the ridiculously overblown finale. When will Scorsese learn that underplaying the situation can sometimes build tension just as effectively as giving the viewer a visual and sonic bombardment? I also thought that he was too respected a reputation to resort to the 'killer-not-dead-yet' cheap trick that less talented individuals might employ.<br /><br />All in all, a thoroughly ridiculous 'thriller'. Scorsese and De Niro have done MUCH better work together. | 0neg
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Worst De Niro Scorsese collaboration in this horrible agonizing violent overlong mess. Scorsese is totally out of his element in this film with the horror cliched suddenly loud phone ringing and door slamming gimmicks that seem laughable and embarrassing coming from such a master craftsman. The cast is totally wasted here and the southern accents are very annoying and forced. Nick Noltie plays the wimpiest lawyer in history who would ever believe he can defend anyone ! De Niro's psychotic Bowden is nothing more than the typical 90's movie psycho killer. The scene with De Niro and Lewis early on is very awkward and the climax goes on and on and we should all be more than tired of the on psycho stalker that never dies. One of my most horrible movie experiences. Rent the original it's 100 times better. <br /><br /> | 0neg
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This remake of the 1962 orginal film'o the book has some very good parts to commend it and some fine performances by some fine actors - however Scorsese opts toward the end for the most formulaic of plot twists and an embarrassingly overacted shakespearean demise that had me looking at my watch.<br /><br />DeNiro is a superb actor, dedicated to giving his all in the work he does, however he needs direction to focus his talent, and this is sorely lacking in the last five minutes of the film.<br /><br />Gregory Peck's cameo is serviceable but nothing more whilst Robert Michum is always fun to watch, even with as few lines as this.<br /><br />Nick Nolte turns in a better performance than Lorenzo's Oil but is not on the same form as "Weeds". Joe Don Baker has some great lines while Juliette Lewis proves yet again that talent sometimes skips a generation.<br /><br />Some good points? The start credits(!), the first view of Cody's back when doing dips in the prison, the scene where Cody is attacked with baseball bats, Sam Bowden's decent into full-fledged panic, Cody's outwardly calm but unnerving prescence.<br /><br />The worst? The "Cleaning woman - BUT NOT REALLY!!!" part. Clinging bare-handed to the underside of a car for a hundred miles at high speed. (Are there no speed bumps in the US?) The "He's dead - BUT NOT REALLY!!!" partS and the aforementioned rambling ending.<br /><br />I may watch the original again, but I've yet to be tempted to watch the remake in four years since seeing it. | 0neg
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What ever possessed Martin Scorcese to remake this film? And not only did he remake it, completely ruin it? The nonsensical decision to make the character played by Robert DeNiro (in his most overdone performance, and that's saying a lot) into a religious fanatic is ridiculous, and exemplary of attitudes harbored by Hollywood (and Mr. Scorcese especially)- attitudes that compel writers to think that the best way to make a character insane is to tattoo a crucifix on his back. In any case, this movie is awful. <br /><br /> | 0neg
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Worst movie, (with the best reviews given it) I've ever seen. Over the top dialog, acting, and direction. more slasher flick than thriller.With all the great reviews this movie got I'm appalled that it turned out so silly. shame on you martin scorsese | 0neg
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Christ. A sequel to one of the most cloying films of all time, this at least has the decency to leave out the songs (bar a reprise of the unbearable "Tomorrow") but does continue the tradition of being nauseating and unfunny. This time, Annie and her friends head off to London and get caught up in Joan Collins's plot to blow up Buckingham Palace or some such shite. The movie has a bizarrely sycophantic attitude towards its eponymous character at odds with how irritating she is: every time the little bugger squeals "Leapin' lizards!" I could feel my teeth grinding themselves down into powder. Drearily photographed, slushy and plodding, the movie has only one memorable line ("Unhand me, you stupid genius!") and the fact that it's not the original to recommend it. | 0neg
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Well where do i start? i think it's very insulting to the original Annie with Aileen Quimnn. I love the film Annie, and i was expecting this to be a brilliant film, but i was so disappointed! the acting is awful, the original Annie came out a few years before i was born, I'm now 25 and Annie is still one of my favourite films, So i was really excited to see Annie 2. The acting was awful in the film, were any of the characters original? very badly written, directed and acted. This is not a film i wish to see again, and any Annie lover i recommend that you don't watch this film because it will only leave you very disappointed. The young girls singing isn't bad but still doesn't compare to the original | 0neg
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Unfortunately there was not a 0 for a rating or else I would've chosen it. This movie lacks the star power that the original movie had in such abundance. Carol Burnett, Albert Finney, Tim Curry, Bernadette Peters, Edward Hermann, the innocence of newcomer Aileen Quinn, and expert directing from seasoned pro John Huston (father of actress Angelica Huston)is what made this film so charming. Even the 1999 remake with Kathy Bates, Victor Garber, Alan Cumming, and Kristin Chenoweth had more to offer than this sorry excuse for a sequel. Before she did this movie all Ashley Johnson was known for was her role as little Chrissie Seaver on the prime time show Growing Pains. She had a few bit parts in movies but I don't know who thought she had talent enough to carry a movie on her own. And adding Joan Collins as Lady Edwina Hogbottom, ridiculous! They couldn't get good enough actors to play the major roles like Daddy Warbucks, Miss Hannigan, and Annie but they will sign Joan Collins to play some British lady? It doesn't surprise me that this movie was as bad as it was. The critics were right to have not agreed with this movie, even if it was only made for TV, it was a poor sequel to an otherwise lovable movie. | 0neg
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This film is absolutely awful, but nevertheless, it can be hilarious at times, although this humor is entirely unintentional.<br /><br />The plot was beyond ridiculous. I don't even think a 2 year-old would be convinced by the ludicrous idiocy that the film-makers tried to slap together into a story. However, on the positive side, some of the horrifically inane plot twists provide a great deal of humor. For example, "Wow, Lady Hogbottom has a giant missile hidden in her back yard!" It gets worse (and even funnier), but I'll spare you.<br /><br />The acting is generally laughable. Most of the kids' roles are sort of cute, but not very believable. On the other hand, Annie is pretty awful all-around. The adults don't take their roles seriously at all, but this is largely a good thing. If they'd tried to be believable, the film would've been even worse. Which is difficult to imagine.<br /><br />Once you get past the overall crappiness of the movie, there are actually a few standout moments of almost-not-crappiness. The scene where Lady Hogbottom's son runs away with the maid is surprisingly hilarious, though it's an annoying letdown when they get caught by the police. The butler character, while very minor, is a ray of sunlight that almost, but never quite pierces through the gloom.<br /><br />Watching this movie actually caused me physical pain. Nevertheless, there were a few redeeming parts that made it almost watchable without beginning to hemorrhage internally. Judged on its good parts alone, the movie would be about a 5; unfortunately, the rest of the movie hardly deserves a 1. Thus, I give it a 3.<br /><br />That's being pretty generous, I'd say. | 0neg
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Not even worth watching this tacky spoiler ruins everything about 'Annie'. The characters seem almost cheapened by the poorly written storyline and they low quality feeling to the production. It was very clearly made for TV, yet if I found it on my television, I would flick it straight over. The children in the film do an alright job, yet the adults acting is unbelievable and so the movie fails to really draw you in. This film lacked the music/dance numbers thats made the original brilliant and truly does take the shine of the Annie we all love. Johnson, as Annie is at times annoying and over acted..you cannot convince yourself that she truly is Annie. The differences in character appearance continued to irritate me throughout the duration of the film. Sad to say this sequel was a total flop. | 0neg
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Annie's wig does not look good. she is not cute and pretty enough to play Annie. Annie sticks out in the movie, as her outfits look like Halloween costumes. terrible acting and terrible plots. This movie is such a change from the 1982 version. I think that a younger and smaller girl should have had the lead role. Ashley Johnson portrays a very boyish Annie. Not appealing at all. At least the casting director got it right with Daddy Warbucks. Ms. Hannigan was also miscast. Camilla Belle played Molly alright. "Warning" this movie might insult your IQ so you might just want to only show it to very young children. 8 and younger. Some of the plots are too fictional and could hardly take place in the real world. | 0neg
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Since the 70s, writer/producer/director Charles Band has been responsible for literally hundreds of science-fiction, fantasy and horror B-movies. Some of them are wonderful examples of how to use a tiny budget to maximum effect; many of them are pretty bad. Trancers (1985) was one of those rare gems.<br /><br />A Terminator style tale of time-travel and action, Trancers saw Tim Thomerson playing Jack Deth, a future cop given the task of tracking down bad-guy Whistler, who travels into the past by inhabiting the body of an ancestor. Whistler is capable of controlling other humans with his psychic powers, converting them into obedient zombies (the 'trancers' of the title), and attempts to alter the course of history by killing off the ancestors of the leaders of the future. Jack follows him to 1985, determined to stop him.<br /><br />In this 1991 sequel, Jack is still living in 1985. Having destroyed Whistler, he has settled down and married Leena (Helen Hunt), the young woman who helped him succeed in the first movie. But, for Jack, things don't stay calm for long, and trouble appears in the form of Whistler's brother, E.D. Wardo, who is trying to build a trancer army.<br /><br />Trancers II lacks the charm and simplicity of the original and is a huge disappointment considering how good the original was. The story is difficult to pick up if you haven't seen the first film (or at least not for a long while), and there is loads of unimpressive action and a few poor special effects. Gone is the inventiveness and wit that made Trancers so much fun; instead we get some cheesy one-liners and a script that feels like it was written on-the-fly.<br /><br />About the only reason I can give for recommending this film to fans of the genre is the cast, which boasts many names that will be familiar to followers of sci-fi and horror movies: Jeffrey Combs, Barbara Crampton, Richard Lynch, Martine Beswicke. Unfortunately, most of them seemed to be having an 'off day' whilst filming Trancers II, and performances are mediocre at best.<br /><br />The Trancers series obviously has its fans; four further sequels have since been churned out. Unless the quality has taken up massive upward swing, I can't imagine them being any good. | 0neg
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The original Trancers is not by any means a great movie. It had massive plot holes and very little in the way of internal logic. However, it was entertaining, better done than most low-budget B-movies, and could be surprisingly witty. Unfortunately, Trancers II is none of these.<br /><br />Trancers II suffers from many of the same problems of most flop sequels. The plot is thin enough to see through and the writing is insipid. It seems that the people behind this movie felt that bringing the familiar faces of the first movie back would be enough, and didn't bother with anything else. Not even veteran B-grade actors like Tim Thomerson and Jeffery Combs were able to drag this film out of the muck.<br /><br />A brief plot overview: Jack Deth (Thomerson) is a cop from the future who was sent to 1985 to save the ancestors of members of his government. Trancers II takes place six years after the events of the first Trancers. Jack Deth is married to Lena (Helen Hunt), the woman he met in the first movie, and both live with Hap Ashby, the man Deth was sent into the past to protect. It is discovered that the brother of Whistler (the bad guy from the first movie) has traveled back in time to create an army of Trancers, people turned into mindless killing zombies, to kill Ashby. Complicating Jack's mission is the fact that his first wife, who had died long before Jack traveled to the past, was also sent back to stop Whistler's brother, and now Jack finds himself working with her.<br /><br />I have two real problems with this movie. One is that the method of creating Trancers in this movie is radically different from the methods used in the first movie. What makes it annoying is that, in a rather poor example of Soviet Revisionism, they act like it was always the technique.<br /><br />The other thing that annoys me is that the love triangle between Deth, Lena, and Alice Stilwell (Jack's first wife) is given very little screen time. This bothered me particularly because it was much more interesting than the actual plot of the movie. It felt like it was just something that was thrown in to fill space in the movie. Alice's character in particular seems very unconcerned with the fact that she is reunited with her husband only to find he's re-married, making her either very shallow or very poorly written.<br /><br />The only reason I can think of for watching this movie is if you're interested in watching the entire Trancers series (currently totaling six movies). Otherwise, even if you're a fan of the original Trancers, stay away from this tepid sequel. | 0neg
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Why review good movies when you can review "Trancers II?"<br /><br />Ooh, this film is soooo lame. I can just picture the cast and crew driving around L.A. with a camcorder, hurling extras in silly monster make-up at poor, long-suffering Tim Thomerson. The stars' families actually turn up to play cameos, probably because Full Moon couldn't afford "real" extras. Lame effects, lame sets, and a script so convoluted it would take eons to untie all the knots - this must be classic Trancers!<br /><br />And yet...and yet...it rules. Note this is the same thing I say about "Trancers IV." I say it because it's true. What can beat watching an old guy in a trench coat mow down zombies, then bust out with quips like, "Don't worry ladies, they're bio-degradable"? Well, lots of things could be better, but anyway this is still good stuff.<br /><br />My only significant reservation is Megan Ward, who really stinks up the joint. She's a lousy rival for Helen Hunt's character - they're both young pieces of eye candy, and it would've been more effective if they actually contrasted a bit more. Oh well, you can't have everything. At least the wonderful plot device of the "long second watch" is back in place, and we've got more of Hap Ashby, the least-convincing athlete in the history of cinema (oh, wait a minute - he's got a rival in the form of David Ogden Steirs in "Creator").<br /><br />I haven't seen this lately, but I do seem to remember that Martine Beswick runs away twice during the final battle. Hooray for lousy continuity! Just one of the many highlights in this fine film. | 0neg
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This is a big step down after the surprisingly enjoyable original. This sequel isn't nearly as fun as part one, and it instead spends too much time on plot development. Tim Thomerson is still the best thing about this series, but his wisecracking is toned down in this entry. The performances are all adequate, but this time the script lets us down. The action is merely routine and the plot is only mildly interesting, so I need lots of silly laughs in order to stay entertained during a "Trancers" movie. Unfortunately, the laughs are few and far between, and so, this film is watchable at best. | 0neg
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Me and my friend rented this movie for $2.50. And we both agree on one thing:<br /><br />THIS IS THE WORST MOVIE EVER MADE!<br /><br />Also me and my friend counted 475 face shots. (Which makes up 95% of the movie).<br /><br />So in other words: DO SEE THIS MOVIE UNLESS YOU LIKE WASTING MONEY! And I do!<br /><br /> | 0neg
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After the debacle of the first Sleepaway Camp, who thought that a franchise could be born. SC II is superior in aspect. More inspired killings and just whole lot more fun. While that might not be saying much (compared to the first movie), Sleepaway Camp II is worth the rental.<br /><br />Pros: Entertaining, doesn't take itself too seriously like SC I. Inspired Killings. Cons: Crappy acting and mullets abound.<br /><br />Bottom Line: 5/10<br /><br /> | 0neg
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Being a slasher film aficionado, I typically will settle in to watch every slash movie that passes over my retinas, which sometimes does more harm than good to my brain, I will say. While channel surfing the other night, Sleepaway Camp II happened to cross paths with me. Of course, I wanted to check it out, as I had heard of the Sleepaway Camp franchise, but have never actually seen any of them (for shame, I know). I will note that since I have not seen the original, my criticism should probably not be taken too seriously, because perhaps what I think is wrong with it is totally intentional by the franchise's own design.<br /><br />Now I'm assuming that the franchise of Sleepaway Camp is, in itself, a joke on itself. Hell, even the name comes off as an intentional joke. Sleep away camp? It's good fun. I can appreciate the film for wanting to just put together something for pure camp horror value, but that's about as far as I can go. The acting in this movie made the cast of the original Friday the 13th look like thespians doing a rendition of Macbeth. Campy requires bad acting, but come on. Pamela Springsteen as the evil out-of-touch-with-reality killer did a better job of killing off my interest than she did killing off the entire cast. As far as comedy goes, there were a few times where I chuckled, but it was few and far between.<br /><br />Ultimately, SAC II is pretty boring, and I really did want to sleep away the camp. The deaths are so obviously staged and fake that you can barely appreciate them. If you're looking for a slasher film comedy with good camp, I recommend Club Dread. If your channel surfing takes you across this one, check and see what else is on. | 0neg
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No wonder Pamela Springsteen gave up acting to become a full-time photographer; it's a much better idea to have her behind a camera than in front of one. While this movie is not without its interesting elements (mullets from hell, etc.), it is outweighed by flaws. For one thing, Angela, the murderous counselor, appears to be about the same age as the campers. Having an older, more threatening camp director would have done a lot for the film. And then you have the murder scenes. The budget was apparently too low to execute most of them properly (no pun intended), although drowning someone in an outhouse toilet is certainly original. But overall, there are a ton of movies out there that are scarier/more fun to spend an hour and a half of your life watching. | 0neg
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This is an immoral and reprehensible piece of garbage, that no doubt wants to be a Friday the 13th (1980) clone. The poster for this movie makes it look like there's going to be some sort of a cross between Jason and Freddy, which is likely to attract movie-goers. There is NOTHING good or entertaining about this movie about this movie. It just makes me sad, just thinking that some people are going to stumble upon Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers (1988) on video or DVD, and waste their time with this sad, cynical, depressing movie.<br /><br />Angela Baker (Pamela Springsteen) is a camp counselor at Camp Rolling Hills, who hopes that the other campers are as nice as she is, and that they stay out of trouble. Meanwhile, the other campers are realizing that people are disappearing one by one, with Angela making up the excuse that she had to send them home. Could Angela be the killer, who was once a man, who underwent a sex change operation years earlier? Who knows? Who cares?<br /><br />The 1980s was home to a lot of movies that made the cross between the Mad Slasher and Dead Teenager genres, in which a mad killer goes berserk. Some have a plot, some don't, but they're all about as bad as this one. Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers is 80 minutes of teenagers being introduced and then being stabbed, strangled, impaled, chopped up, burned alive, and mutilated. That's all this movie is. It is just mindless, bloody violence.<br /><br />Watching this movie, I was reminded of the Friday the 13th movies, in which the message for its viewers was that the primary function of teenagers is to be hacked to death. The filmmakers of Sleepaway Camp II have every right to be ashamed of themselves. Imagine the sick message that this movie offers for its teen viewers: "The world is a totally evil place," this movie tells you, " and it'll kill you. It doesn't matter what your dreams or your hopes are. It doesn't matter if you have a new boyfriend, or a new girlfriend. It doesn't matter what you think, what you do or what your plans for the future are. You can forget those plans, because you're just going to wind up dead." <br /><br />And the sickest thing is--and by not giving too much away--the movie simply sets up room for a sequel. Well, why not? They've probably and already taken the bucket to the cesspool by making three or four of these movies. I missed out on the original Sleepaway Camp (1983), and, after watching its first sequel, I will hopefully stay away from the other sequels, as well as the original. And for parents, if you know kids who actually LIKE this movie, do not let them date your children. | 0neg
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This movie was bad from the start. The only purpose of the movie was that Angela wanted to get a high body count. The acting was horrible. The killings were acted out very badly. Like when Ally got stuffed down that toilet I guess it was in the abandoned cabin. But when the end of the movie comes and Molly and the other guy are in the cabin you see Ally so Angela must have gone in to get her. The part that really got me was when the black girl and Angela were in the cabin and Angela took the guitar string and chocked her. One it was horrible acting and two why wouldn't you just turn around and punch the bitch?!?!? Then when Molly is getting chased by Angela if you have the neigh why not just turn around and stab her??? So stupid. This movie sucked... | 0neg
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Despite being a sequel to the more potent original, this is more of a comical remake of Friday THE 13TH concerning the further antics of psychopathic Angela, killing more nubile teens for their "immorality" at a camp.<br /><br />Pamela Springsteen (sister of Bruce) looks great. There are some pretty darn funny sex scenes with some pretty darn attractive girls, but the movie's so (unintentionally) comedic rather than suspenseful, it's a stinker.<br /><br />* out of ****.<br /><br />MPAA: Rated R for graphic violence and gore, nudity, and for some sexuality, language, and drug use. | 0neg
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Angela Johnson (Pamela Springsteen--yes she's related to Bruce), the killer from the first film, is up to her old tricks again. She's one of the counselors at Camp Rolling Hills. As long as the girls at camp are nice and stay away from sex, drugs and swearing things are fine. But a few step over the line and Angela kills them--cracking bad jokes all the way.<br /><br />The original "Sleepaway Camp" was a vicious and nasty splatter film but had some good points to it. This is vicious and nasty too but has NO good points to it. The plot has been done to death and this adds NOTHING new to the formula. There are plenty of gory killings in here (people are burnt alive, heads are cut off, throats slashed) but all the gore is so obviously fake it actually become comical. This also has the smallest amount of campers I've ever seen and virtually everyone is far too old for their roles (especially Higgins). As expected there's the gratuitous female nudity (here provided by the tremendously untalented Valerie Hartman) and the obligatory good girl/good boy team (Renne Estevez and Tony Higgins). With the sole exception of Springsteen and Higgins the acting is lousy--even by slasher movie standards. There's also a cruel edge to this movie in which one character is drowned in an outhouse! Boring and sick with a stupid plot, pointless nudity and bad gore. Skip it. | 0neg
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So Angela has grown up and gotten therapy and an operation to turn her into a real life daughter, rather than the son that she was born, and now holds a job as - wait for it - a camp counselor! How appropriate, right? I know, I love it. Anyway, the first sequel to the Sleepaway Camp franchise obeys all the rules of horror sequels - more blood, more imaginative killings (which aren't imaginative, but still more so than the original), more nudity, a more elaborate plot, and generally worse than the original. <br /><br />It is entertaining in the same way as the original was, in that the characters and wardrobes are so goofy and so authentically 80's that you can't help getting a good laugh. At one point, a guy asks Angela out, and she says "I'll call you," and then quickly walks away. The guy says to himself, "How is she gonna call me? I don't have a phone!" and then he sniffs his armpits, wondering what turned her off (it's the hair, dude!!).<br /><br />It is a well-known fact that in 80s slasher movies, the murdered teenagers were more often than not being punished by their killer for some kind of bad behavior, usually for being too promiscuous. When I first started getting into horror movies and saw the Friday the 13th movies for the first time in the mid 90s, I didn't realize this. I learned it in a film class a year or two later and was amazed that their was some method to the madness. I was pretty impressed, not only that the movies were passing on some kind of message, albeit a morbid one, but that there was actually some thought put into it.<br /><br />But not in this movie! At one point just before Angela kills one of her victims, she says "Let this be a lesson to you. Say no to drugs!" Real subtle screen writing there, guys. Then again, the dialogue is the most entertaining thing in the movie. Angela (who, by the way, went through all that therapy and those operations and all that trouble to clean up her past and reinvent herself as a normal and well-developed person and then changed her name from Angela to, umm, Angela), says at one point, "I don't like being the wicked witch of the west, but I know what happens when things get out of control." (People start getting killed...by me! HA!)<br /><br />Then later, she demands that one of the counselors, Mare, make an apology, to which the girl replies, "I'd rather die!" Sorry, Mare, but you really walked into that one...<br /><br />Two years ago I was a camp counselor at a sleepaway camp similar to the one portrayed in this movie (except the camp that I taught at had more than three kids to the 15 or 20 counselors and it also had rules, which the one in the movie doesn't). This made me notice the myriad of discrepancies in the movie from what camp life is really like. <br /><br />That's okay though, you can hardly make a movie like this with a lot of 9 year olds running around, although there were some 10 or 11 year old kids killed in this movie. I hadn't seen that kind of thing much before. <br /><br />Definitely bad taste, even for a cheesy 80s slasher movie.... | 0neg
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this movie is not good.the first one almost sucked,but had that unreal ending to make it worth watching.this one has nothing.there's zero scare,zero tension or suspense.this isn't really a horror movie.most of the kills don't show anything.there's no gore to speak of.this could almost be a TV,except for a bit of nudity and a bit of violence.the acting is not very good,either.and don't get me started on the dialogue.as for the surprise ending,surprise,there isn't one.i suppose it could have been worse,although i don't see how.but then again,it is less than 80 minutes long,so i guess that's a good thing.although it felt a lot longer. apparently this is the cut version of the film.i found it for a very cheap price,but it still not worth it.if you want the uncut more graphic version,check out the Anchor Bay edition.anyway,this version of Sleepaway Camp II:Unhappy Campers gets a big fat 1/10 from me. p.s.if you watch this movie,you will probably be a bored and unhappy camper.if you are a real fan,you might want to pick up Anchor Bay's Sleepaway Camp(with survival kit) three disc collection containing the first three movies uncut and with special features | 0neg
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Absolutely putrid slasher film has not one redeeming quality. It has Camp Councellor Angela(Pamela Anderson..awful as the killer;her quips when she wastes people aren't even amusing)on the warpath slaying teenagers who act the least bit naughty or resist her pleadings for good behavior. We run the gamut of boring, clichéd killings such as the slashing to the throat to one kid looking for his Freddy clawed glove, a kid who gets a chainsaw, one girl who gets drilled, one who gets shoved into the crapper(filled with leeches), one who is roasted, etc.<br /><br />It doesn't have one original idea to offer and is merely a waste of time. That is unless you want to see Valerie Hartmen's(who plays the slut Ally)tits. Most of the violence occurs off-screen so even that will not satisfy. | 0neg
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This is not horror, as the first part was: This is ("campy") light and humorous entertainment. Like in so many sequels, the action starts right away with no explanations. But there's boobs, so I don't complain. And real boobs that is. If I understand correctly, those are quite rare today amongst the teenage girls in U.S. of A. Which brings to my mind the fact that the main actress here is Pamela "Bruce's sister" Springsteen.<br /><br />This cannot be thought without the first movie, so I compare this to it. Again there is too small clothing (mainly pants) and funny hair, it's not hard to tell what decade this film is made in. Again there is really strange characters, this time even more visibly "pathological" ones. Especially the personnel of the camp. It's like some mental rehabilitation summer camp. People are older: Most of the actors must be at least 25, but I think they're supposed to be 16 or something. Some "methods" used by the Evil Dyke are quite unpleasant. Actually this movie don't have much in common with the first part, and this is worse than it in every way. | 0neg
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"The Deadly Look of Love" is essentially "Fatal Attraction" with a couple of twists added onto the back half. The ending will not surprise anyone who has seen more than two or three Movies of the Week. It is yet another cautionary tale about succumbing to temptation, and it adds nothing fresh to the genre.<br /><br />Brett (Vincent Spano) is engaged to a beautiful woman who just happens to have a sizable trust fund. Even though he has it all, he risks losing everything by starting up a steamy side affair with Janet (Jordan Ladd). Janet, a doe-eyed blonde from Cedar Falls, falls hard for Brett, and she does not take it particularly well when he comes clean about his engagement. Shortly after the wedding, Mrs. Brett turns up dead in the master bedroom of the large, luxurious home she shared with her new husband. When the police question Brett, he promptly points the finger at Janet. Following her arrest, Janet seems to get loonier by the minute - not that she was the picture of stability before. Her defense attorney (Holland Taylor) is convinced that Janet is innocent and is hell bent on proving it.<br /><br />Did she do it or didn't she? How will it end? You can find out the answers to these questions the next time "The Deadly Look of Love" airs on your local station. And be sure not to miss the moral of this beautiful story: men are pigs, and women are crazy. | 0neg
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I happened upon this flick on a rainy Sunday, intending to tune-in to something else. Out of curiosity, I accessed the comments here, and found myself watching it to the end. I really didn't do so with intent -- this was one of those movies where you're "fascinated," and watch it for "another couple of minutes," until you finally just watch to the end. And the indictment of it in most of these comments made it more fascinating to view. The one comment where the person really liked it seems to be solely as a result of liking Ladd and Spano, and their earlier roles. But great isn't anywhere to be found anywhere here - story, performances, and particularly the absurd courtroom hi-jinks. We all know that Perry Mason (before Raymond Burr passed the 300-lb. mark), and Ben Matlock, are granted some leeway in cavorting around the courtroom, instead of being boringly confined to a lectern. And Matlock is especially granted the privilege of entering exhibits often by simply going to the jury and showing them, before the judge and prosecutor have even been informed of, or shown, them. No real-life judge or prosecutor would stand for this.<br /><br />Both Perry and Ben almost always ended the proceedings by wringing a confession of the real killer. Actually Perry nearly always did this, but often Matlock would simply present overwhelming evidence of the true culprit, pronounce it "reasonable doubt," and then leave it to the cops and prosecutors to proceed against the guilty party - sometimes on-camera, sometimes presumed at the end of the show.<br /><br />But that said, Holland Taylor's histrionics and the amount of leeway afforded her, in the courtroom portion of this story, made the actions of Matlock/Mason more-closely resemble the slow, often boring detail such as seen on Court TV and in real-life courtrooms.<br /><br />Every character in this presentation was either insipid, unsympathetic, obnoxious, boring, improbable - or some combination of two or more of these.<br /><br />The ending was the most banal, absurd, even silly conclusion possible - but again, fascinating because of this. Ladd and Spano are attractive individuals, and t.v. movies would appear their best forte - probably best in 2nd-lead (probably better if "3rd-") roles, even in this venue. Taylor could be cast as the aunt or mother of one of them. Give this one 1 star for the story/performances, and 3 additional for the fascination factor. | 0neg
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I don't remember "Barnaby Jones" being no more than a very bland, standard detective show in which, as per any Quinn Martin show, Act I was the murder, Act II was the lead character figuring out the murder, Act III was the plot twist (another character murdered), Act IV was the resolution and the Epilogue was Betty (Lee Meriwether) asking her father-in-law Barnaby Jones (Buddy Ebsen) how he figured out the crime and then someone saying something witty at the end of the show.<br /><br />One thing I do remember was the late, great composer Jerry Goldsmith's excellent theme song. Strangely, the opening credit sequence made me want to see the show off and on for the seven seasons the show was on the air. I will also admit that it was nice to see Ebsen in a role other than Jed Clampett despite Ebsen being badly miscast. I just wished the show was more entertaining than when I first remembered it.<br /><br />Update (1/11/2009): I watched an interview with composer Jerry Goldsmith on YouTube through their Archive of American Television channel. Let's just say that I was more kind than Goldsmith about the show "Barnaby Jones." | 0neg
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Jennifer Jason Leigh and Mare Winningham are a good match portraying vastly different siblings, but only Winningham is able to bring something convincing or substantial to her role. Leigh, playing bar-band singer and alcoholic Sadie Flood, constantly leans on older sis Georgia, an acclaimed folk singer in the Joni Mitchell mold. Perhaps due to her double duties as co-producer on the film, Leigh seems to have boxed herself into a corner: she isn't credible as a singer and, even if this is intentional, gives herself far too much screen-time at the microphone. Probably hoping for a tour-de-force, Leigh is wire-drawn and nervous and jagged; however, we simply do not see any talent within this character (Leigh is obviously a solid actress, but she makes decisions here that wall us off from her). If Sadie had even the slightest bit of charisma or appeal, we might be able to buy into the concept that she gets the (small) breaks that she does. As it is, the likelihood of her ever getting up on stage is slim. Director Ulu Grosbard crafts a few intense dramatic sequences, and the editing at the finale juxtaposes Sadie's bar performance with Georgia's sold-out arena show--both singing the same song--and it's a sadly nuanced moment...but really, what's the point? *1/2 from **** | 0neg
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I'm not going to say that this movie is horrible, because I have seen worse, but it's not even halfway decent. <br /><br />The plot is very confusing. I couldn't really figure out what was happening and where things were going. When the movie was over, I was left scratching my head. I watched through to the end of the credits to see if they had something after them that may clear things up, but once the credits were over, that was it. I felt like I was jarred from one weak plot point to another throughout the whole movie, with little or no transition between the two. <br /><br />Character development is very shallow. I couldn't figure out when somebody was angry or had a grudge against someone. I couldn't tell if half of the characters were just supposed to be drunk, stoned, mentally challenged or they just had a bad actor to portray them. This film seems to be based around stereotypes (to it's credit, they are hard to avoid using when you are making a film about a singer in a rock band), which SHOULD make character development easier, since so many other films have already illustrated the suffering of an abused child, or the trials of a heroin addict trying to come clean. Stereotypes are easy to depict, which would explain why so many bad films tend to overuse stereotypical characters. This film, on the other hand, uses stereotypical characters left and right, but then tries to keep them as incomprehensible as possible.<br /><br />Another problem with the characters is that they seemed to be dismissed with no explanation. I guess that's OK because so little time was spent developing the characters that I really didn't get a chance to know any of them, so I never really missed any of them.<br /><br />And last but not least was Sadie's singing. It's awful. The music backing her up is not prize winner, but it is usually drowned out by the screeches that are released from Sadie's vocal cords. I swear that there's one point in the movie where she sings a song for at least 10 minutes. I seriously thought I was going to have to turn it off during this howl-a-thon.<br /><br />As a whole, this movie is confusing. Characters are ill-developed, Georgia's acting is wooden and stiff, Sadie's character is yanked from one bad situation to another, with no back story or explanation. The music was unbearable, and I can think of no good reasons to see this film unless you have a thirst for cinematic pain. | 0neg
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A little girl lives with her father and brother in the middle of the countryside. This little girl Rosalie has some psychotic tendencies as the movie opens with her feeding kittens to some kind of creatures in the cemetery, and she has recently lost her mother who went crazy but whilst alive enjoyed staying in the woods all night. The premise of the film has a new young lady coming to Rosalie to take care of her. She is introduced to the evil of the woods while driving and, imagine the suspense here, experiences a huge blue barrel falling over the side of a cliff to somehow stop her car dead in its tracks. From there she walks to the nearest house and discovers Mrs. Whitfield who then goes into a whole lot of explanation about Rosalie and her family. The earnestness exuded by the Mrs. Whitfield character has to be seen to be believed. Well, the young lady meets up with the child and we soon learn that not only is she strange but everyone in the film is very bizarre as well. They all do share one thing in common which is none of them ever heard of an acting school. None of these people can act - as evidenced by the few vehicles any of them in the entire film appeared in before or since - and all of them look like they have little idea what is going on, pause to remember lines, and have all the conviction of a paper bag. The director plods through the material in a slow pace with this horrible piano music crescendoing here and there at things that are suppose to be scary. It takes us a bit before we get to a couple of murders by the creature friends, but by that time I didn't care. The murders are not convincing either, and truth be told the whole film looks like someone through it together on their friend's farm with the people and things on hand there. That all being said the ending does have some creepy aspects to it though we don't learn one darn thing about why Rosalie is like this or more importantly who the creature with the cheap masks are. Cheap doesn't even begin to describe the budget here with. It basically is a couple old farmhouses and some sheds at the end and of course the woods. Someone lent the director a couple old cars too. No special effects of any kind and only the most minimal make-up. There are so many guffaws/ridiculous moments to list, but I will just list a few here that at the very least made me chuckle from the lack of aptitude from the creative powers involved: 1)Watch the gardener's body well after he has been "slain". Len comes in and sees him butchered and you can see his fat belly heave with life. 2)the dying scene at the end where the actress playing Rosalie is killed. She looks like she is listening to directions and takes her sweet time dying considering the method. 3)How about the guy playing Roaslie's father giving us a cranky poor man's Andy Griffith. The scene where he is laughing about boy scouts dying was a weird hoot. The Child is indeed a very bad film and is very bad even for the standards of 70's cheese if you will. This isn't a B film but more like a Z film with producer Harry Novak making some money on virtually nothing. | 0neg
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There were a lot of truly great horror movies produced in the seventies - but this film certainly isn't one of them! It's a shame The Child isn't better as it works from a decent idea that takes in a couple of sometimes successful horror themes. We have the idea of a vengeful child, which worked so well in classic films such as The Bad Seed and then we have the central zombie theme, which of course has been the backbone of many a successful horror movie. The plot is basically this: young girl blames a load of people for the death of her mother, so she goes to the graveyard and raises the dead to get revenge (as you do). This is all well and good, except for the fact that it's boring! Nothing happens for most of the film, and although it does pick up at the end with some nice gore; it's not enough of a finale to justify sitting through the rest of it. The film was obviously shot on a budget as the locations look cheap and all the actors are rubbish. There's really not much I can say about the film overall as there isn't much to it. The Child is a dismal seventies horror flick and I certainly don't recommend it. | 0neg
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This movie was seriously awful. The acting was the worst! It was worse than a student film. Super cheesy, and I think the worst actor was the old lady. At first I thought to myself, well it's an old movie. Then I remembered that that is no excuse! I've seen older movies with way better acting and such.<br /><br />The music was terrible to. It was really choppy. The editing was poor (most of the dialog was out of sync.)<br /><br />Overall, this movie doesn't even deserve a 1. I only watched it because I was so bored, and the movie hardly entertained me. It was just laughable. My dead grandmother's left pinkie toe could make a better movie than this. | 0neg
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And that comes from someone that will withstand almost ANY viewing. The acting and sound is awful. This might qualify for a "so bad it's good" point of merit,,,for some. However I take my horror movies seriously and this is just crap-it's just soooo cheap, I think that's my major complaint. The dialogue is often hilarious-attention to how many times "you startled me" is used. The "child" actress is seriously god awful-I pray her acting career ended here..her line "DONUTS! I HATE DONUTS" is worth repeated viewing however. | 0neg
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If you're going to look after a child, make sure they don't live anywhere near a graveyard. Especially if said kid has a habit of drawing gory pictures and disappears at night among the tombstones to see her 'friends'. But, our long haired heroine, oblivious to all the signs, shacks up with her family the Nortons, which include a strict father and a dullard older brother who becomes a love interest for our budding babysitter. Even more spooky than the zombie gang outside is the cast's tendency to talk even when their lips aren't moving, and for the words to not match the movement of their mouths. But enough of that.. domestic animals are being sacrificed, old ladies are having eyeballs torn out and the orchestra won't shut up during any scene, even the quiet ones. Oh, and the editor is having a day off going by the way the film drones on.<br /><br />In fact, it would been better if everybody involved had taken a breather, smelt what they'd signed up for and gone AWOL. Yes, I know it's hard to get into movies these days, but this sort of starter point is not one on your CV you'd want. If would be like a trainee farm labourer having a conviction for chicken molesting. Featuring one of the worst lead performances ever by the shrill Laurel Barnett, and another almost equally as bad by the charisma-free child actress Rosalie Cole (The next Dakota Fanning she ain't) the film meanders on and on with nothing but padding until we get what passes for a climax.<br /><br />This involves five or six members of the undead barricading our utterly useless heroine in a shed, while her bit of rough fends off these ghouls with a plank of wood, a one shell shotgun and whatever he can lay his hands on. But back up a minute.. earlier on they were in the car, and they accidentally discovered that the creatures found the noise of the horn so repellent they shuffled off at the sound of it. So do they stay where they are safe? No of course not, they run off to this abandoned building in the middle of nowhere, so the bloke can prove what a hardnut he is the girl can act like she's having a nervous breakdown.<br /><br />Finally, the film closes. It doesn't end, it just goes to a grinding halt. The main character wanders back to her vehicle covered in fake blood, as if nothing horrible had happened. But, my dear viewer, something horrible has happened. You have just sat through one of the most lamebrained, boring horror films you're ever likely to see, and lost 82 minutes of your life you'll never get back. Just think.. years from now on your deathbed, what you'd trade an hour and 22 minutes for just to spend a bit of extra time with your family. Sadly, it's already too late for me. Don't you make the same mistake :( 2/10 | 0neg
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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. | 0neg
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The Treasure Island DVD should be required viewing in any film production course! It's a textbook example of how NOT to make a movie. Watching the movie and then listening to the writer/director's commentary demonstrates graphically the vast chasm between what he knows about the characters and what he communicates to his audience about them. Call me old-fashioned, but I think of movies as a means of communication, and communication isn't complete if the audience doesn't know what the hell the director is talking about. The director's avowed purpose is to make a movie void of "Hollywood conventions". Among those conventions, alas, is consistency of character and clarity of concept. The director himself realizes that audiences often don't understand points where he has purposely avoided a "Hollywood cliché". However, he never seems to grasp the idea that clichés exist for a reason. They are shorthand for conveying complex ideas quickly and clearly. It's fine to avoid them, but they need to be replaced with some other way of communicating the same idea, not simply eliminated. The film is built on an intriguing premise, rich with potential. Two puppets are assigned to fabricate a personality and background for an unidentified corpse that is to be used in a disinformation mission in the closing days of WWII. Soon each begins to populate their personal fantasies with the character and their invention becomes increasingly real to them. Someone with less disdain for the "Hollywood convention" of traditional storytelling could create a wonderful film with this idea. This film certainly isn't it! The puppets do everything they can to bring consistency to these characters, but they are all too often defeated by the dazed and confused script. In particular, I'm becoming increasingly impressed by Gonzo, who plays the lively corpse. In a number of muppet films, he always stands out as a very charismatic puppet. | 0neg
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The shame of it! There I was, comfortable in the arm chair with a beer and a bag of popcorn, bouyant in the hope of another splendid Muppet night of entertainment. What did I get? Disappointed! How can the Muppets go from the sublime Christmas Carol to this? The humour was dreadful, the songs were worse than Country and Western (and that's saying something) and the plot was as confused and poor as Blind Pew. I think the main problem was that they bit off too much in attempting Treasure Island. A short tale, such as Christmas Carol, is perfect because you can weave the Muppet high jinks around it....here the need to drag the plot along stopped all the fun. Where do the Muppets go next? How about Muppets Wizard of Oz? | 0neg
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I must say this movie is a Mork and Mindy knock off, when watching it i got the chills, I even wet myself a little. When that Korean guy with the spiders in his neck started kicking people i was like oh my lord Asian people smell and suck cause they eat dogs all the time. Any way back on track Chuck had a somewhat terrible performance and lacked the intelligence of a regular non robotic human being. Some people would compare it to his earlier days when he was a car wash analyzer and believed in the holy ghost and the ghost of Christmas past. This movie is so bad I put my new born child in a box and left it in Mr. Norris mailbox. He can raise my kid I'm not letting him into a world where he thinks chuck Norris is a karate expert Ill let him see what that hack is like in real life for the rest of his life. | 0neg
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Subsets and Splits