Reviews
Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999)
mostly good!
The effects and sound were of course stunning, and the acting was much better than the critics made it out to be. It was well worth the price of admission, and I'm going again ASAP!
I actually liked Jar Jar, which I hear most people did not.
Couple of negatives tho. . . The beginning of the movie did not at all feel like Star Wars. It didn't really start feeling like Star Wars until they got to Tatooine. Before that, it felt more like a cross between Star Trek and Babylon 5. This isn't necessarilly a bad thing, but it's not good either. Jake Lloyd is a cute kid in a very big role, but he simply couldn't pull it off. I'm sorry, but I think if I were flying a fighter ship into the hangar bay of an enemy capital ship, my shields were down, and I was surrounded by dozens of angry robots pointing large guns at me, and my shields finally came back online, I don't think my reaction would be a calm "oh good there they are." Also, and this isn't Jake's fault, I would not say "yipee" all the time! Shades of Leave it to Beaver!
Aside from the fact that Jake was thoroughly unconvincing, the movie was excellent, and a must-see for everyone!
Twister (1996)
Every bit as realistic as Solarbabies
I'm a tornado chaser. The movie has portrayed us as a bunch of yahoo cowboys who have no concept of danger. We do not: 1) go bouncing across fields and through ditches chasing tornadoes 2) get hit by a tornado, watch our truck slam to the ground, and calmly commandeer another truck and keep chasing. We go home and change our underwear if we ever get hit. 3) We don't get hit because we're not stupid enough to drive up to a tornado 4) We don't find a tornado every 20 minutes. Finding one tornado in 3 weeks of chasing is getting pretty lucky. 5) We don't yell and whoop and holler when we get hit by two tornadoes. We go home and change our underwear again, and give up chasing because we're too stupid to chase if we get hit twice in one day. 6) In the scene where Bill was dropping grass leaves to determine where the tornado is: The clouds being shown were from an actual tornado chase video. It was a classic, very promising mesocyclone. In this situation, we would be going ballistic and scrambling to go after it, not standing around smelling dirt and commenting "it's really talkin'" 7) We can't tell when and where a tornado will be by smelling dirt. 8) We can't tell when and where a tornado will be by looking at grass stems. 9) We don't stop in the middle of a chase for steak and eggs at Aunt Meg's. 10) Tornadoes do not growl like a lion 11) We don't have love-interest arguments while a tornado is bearing down on us 12) DOROTHY is actually a rip off of a real tornado package developed in the 70's by the National Severe Storms Lab, called TOTO (TOtable Tornado Observatory) 13) In a real chase team, Dusty would be shot. 14) There are no evil chasers. We don't compete against each other, and we don't get corporate sponsorship. 15) We don't go busting through cornfields and almost cause wrecks by blasting out onto a highway. 17) We don't listen to bopping music when we're chasing a tornado. We listen to AM radio (it transmits lightening flashes), scanners, CB's, and HAM radios (usually all at the same time) Some of us have TV's in our cars to tune in local weather channels too. 18) We don't run in to barns for shelter from a tornado. We know they'll be blown away. 19) a belt will not hold us down in an F5 20) even if it did, we'd be killed by flying debris. F5's can lift semitrucks and hurl them around at around 100mph. The survivability potential there is very low. 16) Dirt roads are avoided (not good to get stuck in the mud) and for the final bit of unrealism, the scene where Aunt Meg is saved from the heavy TV falling on her by the co-axial cable holding it back . . Anyone who's ever hooked up video equipment knows the stupid co-ax's break at the drop of a hat. There's no way it would have held the TV.
And the acting was bad too!!!
all in all, the movie stunk! (I will admit, I really liked the soundtrack. Very nice music)
The Day After (1983)
Required viewing!
This movie should be required viewing for anyone who wants to get into a position of power. It's also one of the rarest breed of movies that actually depicts war as something to be avoided, not something to revel in.
Iron Eagle II (1988)
*wince*
I think the fact that the IMDb rating for this movie is actually lower than ISHTAR kinda speaks for itself, don't you?