caracho Reviews

National Security (2003)

Mr. Lawrence is back in business. Highly enjoyable!

[8/10 · 28 February 2003]

This is one of the movies where the actual movie is way better than the trailer suggested. After watching the trailer I went to see this movie with relatively low expectations, but still hoping to see an average movie like "Big Momma's House" or "Black Knight" (in contrary to the awful "Stealing Harvard" movie I watched last week) But to my surprise, this movie wasn't as silly as I expected after watching the rather stupid trailer. I had quite a few good laughs and really enjoyed watching this movie. I would say that this movie is definitely one of the top 4 Martin Lawrence Movies (behind "Bad Boys", "Nothing to Lose" and "Blue Streak")

I must admit that the story isn't really new and very innovative, but the buddy-formula (or should I say "anti-buddy") still works well, and some stunts are also quite impressive.

I would say Mr. Lawrence is back in business with this movie, can't wait to see the sequels to "Blue Streak" and "Bad Boys" now ...

Feuer, Eis & Dosenbier (2002)

The movie tries to be too funny and fails.

[4/10 · 20 February 2002]

I just saw this movie at a surprise preview, too. Everyone got a free beer, and this was really necessary to make me stay for the whole movie. The movie had a good start though, but after a while it surely got out of hands. The movie tried to be "more than funny" and thus failed miserably.

The best thing about it was the "stolen" guitar-jingle from the Bill & Ted movies (which I still like very much). But other than that, this "buddy-movie" didn't even come close to the Bill & Ted humor. I wonder how such respected actors like Christoph M. Orth (who plays the "Bond-like" villain in this movie) got involved with this.

I noticed that in several scenes, one take had trees with much snow on them, the next take had totally green trees, then they were snowy again. It seems that the producers didn't really pay much attention to such details.

The end credits featured numerous outtakes, and it looked like all the actor really had a lot of fun during production. Most certainly they had more fun making the movie than the audience will have watching it.

Jason X (2001)

This movie rocks!

[9/10 · 15 August 2001]

I just saw the unrated and uncut version of this movie in a large cinema with over 1000 seats filled mostly with Jason fans, and I must say that this movie rocks. It has everything you would expect from a Friday the 13th movie... and more. Plenty of gore scenes, some funny and selfironic stuff, a lot of allusions to the other jason movies, many sexy dressed chicks and a really evil Jason on a killing spree. This is definitely one of the best Jason movies. When I first heard about this movie, I had my doubts about the futuristic theme, but it suits the movie very well (unlike Hellraiser IV) and adds some fresh ideas to the Friday the 13th series. Even the Terminator/Robocop like Jason at the end of the movie fits in well. If you're a fan of this genre, go watch it in a theater as soon as you can and definitely buy the DVD (but only if they release this uncut version)!