Change Your Image
lowth2000
Reviews
Fallen (1998)
Supernatural Thriller
Fallen is a 1998 offering from Greggory Hoblit and Nicholas Kazan. The plot is loosely based on an amalgamation of Chrstian mysticism. It sees Denzel Washington locked in what appears to be a hopeless battle with a sadistic fallen Angel, Azazel.
The film starts with some promise. It has a reasonable cast with a charismatic big name star. The rest of the film does not live up to the opening. The plot seems thin and ill thought out. It drags needlessly, lacking depth or imagination.
Even with a weak plot one feels that the film could have been better. The execution was poor. A poor script eroded the films believability. The characters lacked charm and failed to interact like human beings. The dialogue was stiff and stilted. Character reactions were frequently risable. It was difficult to tell if much of the dialogue was intended to be tounge in cheek. Whether they were or they were not, they did not arouse mirth in the audience.
Likewise the direction was not strong. Whilst not as bad as the scripting it was frequently annoying. The blurred demon-cam shots were both cliche and just a pain. They were over used and therefore added little to the suspense. Likewise the audience did not really need it sign posted whenever Washington was about to be attacked.
The execution of the ending was smug. The ending was also predictable. What's more is that the audience simply do not care by the end anyway. Their seems little left to fight fore. The demon seemed undefeatable and remained so throughout the film.
This film will appeal to you if you like pseudo-religious fantasy ala Stigmata or Prophecy. It may also appeal to you if you like ghost plots. For the neutral viewer you'd probably be best to look elsewhere for an entertaining film.
The Sum of All Fears (2002)
Standard Stuff
By John Lowther
The plot looks involving, the cast looks strong, and the previous Jack Ryan stories to hit the big screen have been considerably above average.
The plot was never entirely believable though, it didn't sit well or work somehow. I know what your thinking, 'yeah right a terrorist attack on America pull the other one!'
It was not the scale of the attack that didn't work. Nor the idea of a terrorist attack. It was the conspiracy itself and in truth the characters who simply were not strong enough.
After the film I asked my friends for the names of various characters, the only known one was Jack Ryan himself. None of the characters were strong, not even Morgan Freeman. There seemed to be absolutely no depth to any of them, they were interchangeable and represented nothing.
The characters were not fleshed out enough. There was no depth to them. This is why the film seemed so unbelievable but more importantly it made it dull. The viewer didn't engage with the film fully because the characters lacked a human side. Some blame it on Ben Afflec's acting but I favour the explanation that he didn't get a chance to do any acting. Sure he ran about a bit, but the human relationships and basically the characters in general were not explored. The film never quite moved out of second gear.
His girlfriend was a weak character. In the other Ryan films the family element has been a source of comparison for the viewer - a link to their lives. A motivating factor that sucks people in and reifies the Ryan character. This film lacked any grounding for Ryan. He seemed to be a CIA agent and that was it. Obviously, the girlfriend sub plot was slapped in to try and ground him - however it failed. The girlfriend had little screen time, and little relevance. Ryan was not an interesting character and he seemed quite dislodged from humanity.
The bad guys were just comic. The poor characterisation of the fascists made the film less believable and retarded the excitement of the audience. That Alan Bates had to be identified as a fascist with a swastika on his watch said a lot about the subtlety on show. I would rather not have him pigeon holed like that and if he was supposed to be a neo-nazi then there were better ways of showing this. Generally Neo-Nazi's differ from the line of Hitler to some extent now, there views have changed on a lot of issues but none of this was shown. They were simply Hitler's boys. However, they didn't make sense - an international clique of nazis?!? Nazi and internationalist? Sounds as likely as a Communist CEO to me. They seemed more like lonely old men. Their motivations were largely confused and unexplored. The European pan-nationalism thing had some promise but that was mentioned once and put on the backburner. The idea of South Africa being involved confused things because they are outside of Europe, and if as Bates's Dr. Evil claimed that the point was to get all Aryans working together why plot the destruction of America? The group also had problems about the destruction of Russia. The baddies were a confused lot and the audience was left in some doubt over there motivations. Surely to afford 50 million they would have to be a powerful terrorist group? They were under developed and Bate's was seemingly in panto mode.
The film was quite dull, the characters underdeveloped. The plot was also both underdeveloped and laboured. The plot was not fleshed out with twists, turns and suspense. Whilst the end was quite suspenseful it was never genuinely a clever film. This was not brain fodder. The plot was so very predictable and without much colour. There was nothing interesting or new about it - though the production was slick enough.
A far better choice would be for all readers of this review to go and watch Dr Strangelove.
-John
ps. The ending was also very smug.
Bad Company (2002)
JohnJohn say:
This film is rather dull. At times Hopkins' performance livens things up but frankly he isn't that well suited to an action style role. This was very similar in some ways to Enemy of The State, however, Hopkins was asked to do things they did not have Hackman doing. Essentially particularly towards the end, Hopkins was asked to pull off the incredible role of the over 60's hardman role. Hopkins at times cut an absurd figure fighting with a fit 20 year old terrorist on the outside of the car during a car chase. It was sad to see such a good actor so badly cast.
Chris Rock... don't give up the comedy! His performance wasn't great, though to be fair it was far from awfull. The material he had to work with was god awfull though and he would have really had to pull something off to make this film funny. The jokes were poor, and the characters were poorly developed (if developed at all!) so there was little in the way of character centred, situation comedy laughs. The comedy relied on tired 'I'm a nigger man' style jibes from a fast talking Chris Rock. Suffice to say it doesn't really work, and particularly not in this setting since all the other characters were so unbelievebly staight laced and humourless. The other characters bizzarely didn't even react to his jokes. All in all the humour was a let down and the film was incredulous.
The action was simply stupid and formulaic. The makes had obviously planned to get all the key components of an action film in and the plot was loosely tied around this playing to the demographics. The set ups seemed manidotry and banal, the combat ludicrous and smug, and the plot twists cringeworthy. For gods sake, at one point the CIA implanted a device under Rock's ear so they could hear everything he could - however, the tracking device they put on Rock's car was larger than a frizby -=huge=- and was so loosely clipped on the underside that it dropped off when they went over a bump in the road! the terrorists on the other hand implanted a Global Positioning system into his phone using a microchip. Oh god, I could go on, but there were so many stupid errors.
This film isn't the worst ever, however it is dull. It's crammed with ill thought out action scenes, has a very weak plot, and abjectly fails as a comedy. The comedy fails so badly that they even drop it after about an hour and a half and revert to bad action.
Mortal Kombat (1995)
Rather poor
Although I did not have high hopes for this film since it was a conversion from a computer game it still must be said that the film was of a bad standard. It is probably not the worst film ever, but it does not impress in any way. As has been said many times previously the plot is indeed whimsical and lame but this alone should not make an action film so poor. The greatest let down for any fan of the martial arts/ action film genre must be that the fight scenes are abjectly unsatisfying and fail to excite it any way.
It could well be said that the reasons why the fight scenes left the viewer indifferent were because the plot did not encourage you to care about the characters. This is true, the characterisation was slipshod at best, however, again, action can be interesting and amusing without reasonable characterisation sometimes. Perhaps then it is the fault of the script writers. The script was horrendously bad, marked chiefly by dialogue that simply did not fit in with the action taking place visually, and of course, sometimes contradicting the story. I am not sure if they really did employ script writers on this movie, or perhaps they were foreign and something was lost in the translation, but again action can be interesting even if the script is poor. The special effects were equally dismal with the 'Goro' character looking laughably silly waddling around, 'Kane's' head looking like it was stolen on trick or treat night and sundry other bizarre blunders. The whole film did have a distinctly tacky and silly look. The designs were pathetic, the film itself had an atmosphere of cheapness, and the enemies all looked uninnovative and unimpressive. The direction was bad with the main characters, and villain being shown in an amiable comic style. The action was unimpressive because when all of these deficiencies are taken into account there is nothing positive to say. The directing was particularly woeful, but the script writers too must accept a large amount of the blame for this waste of film. The acting did come over as being of a very poor standard as well, but I would refrain from criticising that since with that script, that plot, and that director, they never stood a chance.
Zoolander (2001)
5 out of 10
I came out of the film declaring it to be worth no more than four out of 10. I can't fully explain why I have given it such a poor mark even after upping it to a 5. It was not that bad, it contained funny moments, it contained some good ideas, and it had good actors in. However, it was a big disappointment.
It just wasn't funny enough. Zoolander was over acted and poorly portrayed by Stiller. The character smacked not of idiocy but of insincerity. He was annoying, predictable and ill thought out. It would have been so much better if Stiller had not affected that dumb accent. The accent didn't really work for me and it would have been better to show Zoolander's stupidity entirely through his dialogue and actions.
It was stupid and ridiculous. It did contain good ideas with a great deal of potential humour but... it just didn't work. To me it seemed ill thought out, like the first draft of a film, nor really ready for publication. It reminds me strongly of another Stiller vehicle, Mystery Men. Bags of potential but ultimately disappointing. It's like the whole thing was just the product of a bunch of mates having a laugh together. It needed a lot more work put into it at the writing stage, and basically a lot more planning prior to production.
The characters were weak. The models were write offs as main characters almost immediately - they would have been excellent props and quite useful as sub characters. The humour was generally one level humour and without any shade of subtlety. There were far too few laughs and at the audience could be seen cringing on more than one occasion during the film. That said, it was well produced and there were funny moments, such as David Bowie's cameo. Still the funny moments were not developed enough and surely, with further work in pre production flaws such as these could have been reduced.
This was not an unwatchable film. It was entertaining but sadly not awfully funny, and surely, that is what a comedy is supposed to be?
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992)
6 out of 10
This film is based on a very good and different series. At times the series seemed to drag a little and I presumed that in having to compress the material to film length this would cause the writers to further distill their product. The result diverges from the series.
Very quickly, almost immediately a strange atmosphere is created. This is highly commendable, and this is improved by the inclusion of two new characters (the detectives) who are both interesting and usefull in moving the plot. The reintroduction of the amusing figure of Gordon Cole is an instant Triumph, and the use of the excelent Kyle Mclachlen increases the appeal for established Twin Peeks fans. I love the introduction it works really well, asks a lot of questions and gives a good airing to Lynch's humour.
However, after the introduction the film starts to go downhill. I have watched and throughly enjoyed many of Lynch's films, but this is the only one in which I have got bored. I even started channel flicking towards the end. The reason for this diminuendo is the process of focussing on Laura Palmer. She just isn't the character you really expected her to be, and nor is she interesting. This main body of the film also requires a lot of experience and knowledge of Twin Peeks to understand it. This is surely a failure. Old characters are used once (eg the log lady, David Bowee, and Bobby's future girlfriend and her husband) who simply need not be in. They are only there to appeal to people like me who had seen the film. Perhaps with the exception of Bowee, they offer nothing nothing to the film in plot or even tone.
Laura Palmers last days simply are not interesting enough. Perhaps the film should have focussed on something else entirely or brought in other sub plots. I appreciate that sub plots could have been a disaster in this film causing a total lack of focuss, but the main story was rather dull. It also needed to be more mysterious, by following Laura as the main character too much was explained, and the audience felt that more needed to be explained. I would have preffered another, a more normal charcter to have been the focuss. Maybe Donna should have been the main character with occasional focuss on Laura. The mystery was lost.
I also did not like the potrayal of Leeland. Leeland was a nice guy who's dark side was well hidden - in the film he was obviously a fruit cake and the Bob - Leeland connection was shown all too soon.
Overall I found the movie dissapointing but not without some very good points. The introduction was excelent.
Planet of the Apes (2001)
Well set up but lacking in plot
It had all the hype of an epic. It looked like an epic. It failed to deliver. It did however have it's plus points: It was at times entertaining, it had a very good trailer, Helena Bonhem Carter was very good, and the science side was more thought out. However, the characterisation of all the characters was poor at best. The action slant Burton took destroyed all subtlty or poignancy within the movie and the action scenes were rather lackluster and unimaginative.
Why was that blond chic even there? What did she offer to the film's plot? What was her character, other than pretty?
-John
She's All That (1999)
Entertaining
It's entertaining if at times not entirely on purpose. The dance scene at the prom towards the end of the film REALLY makes it for me. I laughed and laughed at this absurdly unrealistic scene! It's hilarious, almost as good as Freddy's acting!
-John
Soldier (1998)
A watchable film with a good cast
Overall I would say this film is mildly enteratining and easy to watch if not exceptional. The plot is weak and there is no point to the film, however it is all done with some style and it is backed up by a good cast. Jason Isacs and Gary Busey are under rated and Russel is not bad at all considering.
It's a fairly entertaining film, probably on par with Aliens, in truth.
-John
The Devil's Advocate (1997)
Moderately good film
This is a reasonable film with a good cast. It has a good basic idea and an intreaging plot. The first half of the film is really rather good but the second half is a little predictable, far fetched, and a bit dissapointing. Al Pachino, as ever is very good but Keanu is rather poor. Keanu's accent varies quite a bit and the plot seems a little tame and blunted.
It's an enjoyable film to watch.
-John
Dune II: The Building of a Dynasty (1992)
A ground breaking game
There is little doubt that this game spawned the hugely successful C&C genre that followed it. Its massive popularity was largely doen pragmatic view of the story. Dune2000 was a disappointment, shame we cant see a Dune total conversion of C&C Tiberian Sun.