BWMonkey Reviews

Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles (1994)

why do vampires have to whine so much?

[28 March 2004]

i read the book, liked it okay and then saw the movie. overall, i liked it. it was a welcome change to the usual portrayal of vampires as pure evil, spawned from the devil and with a lot of religious aspects to it. anne rice made her vampires enjoyable and easy to believe in. unfortunately, louis (brad pitt) is a terminal whiner.

i preferred lestat, loathe though i am to say that i liked tom cruise. brad pitt just annoyed me and i kept wishing he would come to terms with the fact that he now has to drink blood to stay happy and functional. the star of the show was, by far, young kirsten dunst as claudia. as the film progressed, she gave the impression of maturing and adulthood, even though her appearance never altered.

this movie was fairly close to the book, mostly just leaving things out rather than changing them completely. it was far too melodramaitc for my taste, however. why can't vampires just be? by do they have to talk with a lot of dramatic pauses and look at you with smouldering eyes? can't they just be? that, of course, is a personal preference.

not a bad movie. good to see with friends, especially when you like to poke fun a the characters. my specialty.

Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)

not bad...

[28 March 2004]

it's hard to say with this movie. i loved the acting. except, of course, for dear keanu. i wonder how he ever got that job. any acting job, as a matter of fact.

but aside from him, eveyone else was good. anthony hopkins as professor van helsing was wonderful to watch. gary oldman makes a pretty good dracula. some would disagree but this was the first version of dracula i ever saw. i could never get into the bela lugosi versions. and tom waits. what can i say?

this movie was pretty good in terms of following the book. unfortunately, this being the movie business, they had to add the love story between mina and dracula, citing the long-lost love theme that appears in so many vampire flicks. that ruined the rest of the movie for me, especially after i read the book. it was pointless, it didn't change anything. they already had a love story going on so why do they need another?

again, my main beef with vampire flicks is the constant melodrama. this film was better than most, surprisingly, but it was still there. to get rid of it completely would be folly because that's what makes a drama a drama, but, in this case, it was over done.

so, apart from bits of the story line and some of the feeling, i liked this movie. i would recommend it.

Peter Pan (2003)

i was unsure

[7/10 · 27 March 2004]

at first, i was slightly unsure what i thought about this movie. i saw right away that it was charming, exciting, adventerous, etc, but i couldn't decide whether or not i liked it.

Rachel Hurd-Wood was a pleasant surprise. she has talent, though you cannot tell by the trailers. for the longest time in my younger years (no too long ago, in fact) i hated wendy and wished she had no part of the story, but in this new version, i actually liked her very much. i think it had something to do with the slight adjustments made on her character. Jeremy Sumpter was....to tell you the truth, i watched it new years day and it's now march, but from what i can remember, he definitely looked the part. his acting was at times a bit painful for me to watch, but then again, i've always been overly critical of younger actors. overall, the kids were great, fun to watch, funny, in no way obnoxious. i liked tiger-lily (i once had a cat named after her) though i'm still not sure where the little romance between her and john came from. Smee was great (his parrot irked me, though). pretty much everyone went above and beyond my expectations.

there's one charcter that deserves his own paragraph, and that is Captain James Hook. by far, the most important villian of all of my childhood adventures. in the 1953 disney version (which i watched over and over, much to the annoyance of my poor father who had to go out and rent it every weekend and sit through it with me) captain hook was my favorite. i watched and endured Hook just for him. and now, to this day, he still lurks in the back of my mind, waiting to leap out with that hook of his and make me grin. bad guys are so cool.

jason isaacs quickly rose to my top ten favorite actors of all time before i even saw this movie. but now....well, geez. i think i'm in love. he was brilliant as hook and mr. darling. we know the characters so i won't bore you with details. my fist thought when i saw the trailer was "of course! jason isaacs is perfect." and whoever designed the costume and make-up deserves special mention because he looked exactly how i always pictured the villain. i especially liked the twist that was given to his character, making you feel almost sympathetic (or maybe just sorry) towards him by the end. my my, does mr isaacs play the villian well, though he was equally good as mr. darling, a boring, penny pinching man, unsure of himself but wanting ever so much to do well. a good soul.

now, if i love the charcters so much, why was i unsure? i think it had partially something minor aspects to the story that struck me as out of place. i'm the type who loves it when a book is adapted well and this is one of those cases. from what i saw, it appeared that pretty much every aspects of J.M. Barrie's original story was there, in one way or another, even the "adult" over tones. but hollywood had a hand in it as well, trying desperately to give the movie a "message" that children would accept and parents would approve of. i'm not sure what that message was, though. it has something to do with the whole "love" theme. i admit that i am not one who gets all teary-eyed when two people profess their love for each other so, when watching those scenes in the theater, i couldn't help but cringe at the failed attempt make love the answer to all of life's troubles. but i won't start philosophising. i've already said enough.

in conclusion, i liked it. it made me want to be there, fighting pirates, running though the luscious forests and flying among the pink clouds. i an no longer unsure, and when it finally comes out on DVD, i plan to watch it over and over (skipping the more sickeningly love-oriented scenes). that is, if i ever get a DVD player. the i'll have to fast forward.

The Patriot (2000)

i giggled endlessly

[4/10 · 27 March 2004]

i swear, i could not stop laughing throughout this movie. laughing at the characters, the acting, the warped history. i did a little research online and found out a few interesting facts. this film is not historically accurate so i will try and look at it through a movie-based lense, not a historical one.

first of all, though i do enjoy watching mel gibson on occasion, his performance in this film made me cringe. don't get me wrong, he's a wonderful actor but he over did the father-in-anguish, man-with-a-tomented-soul bit and i couldn't muster up enough sympathy for his character on that end. i liked him better than heath ledger, however. okay, so those two charcters are out.

charlotte was fine but she didn't seem to do much more than stand around and react to things. anne was absolutely one of the most obnoxious female i have seen in a flick for the past five years. the children were good and the little girl was delightful, but even those people seemed glossed over. the story checked back on them once or twice but it was incomplete. the militia men were entertaining and the french gentleman was noteworthy at times. but, on the patriot side at least, the characters didn't make too much of an impression.

on the other side (damn those redcoats), evil ole' colonel tavington was engrossing. though the character itself was far too two-dimensional to believe in, mr jason isaacs managed to pull it off. the long flowing hair and the half open frilly shirt was a nice touch, though i wonder what the director was thinking in that scene. seems a little silly to make the man we are supposed to hate look so good.

i liked the costumes (though some were historically inaccurate, but i said i wouldn't delve into that aspect) and the scenery, and the one-on-one fight scenes. i just couldn't find it in my heart to sympathise with the "good-guys" in this film, though i most certainly do not condone the slaughter of helpless civilians. but that was put there for shock value and to make tavington even more unsavory AND none of those characters mattered so it's hard to feel angry about it. the endless amounts of blood sporting from wounds and spraying the faces of the soldiers was a little much.

to wrap this up, i felt nothing more than amusement at the pure silliness of the film. the characters were either annoying or made no impression at at (with the exception of tavington, who was neither), the plot was pulled from some special hollywood handbook somewhere with very little originality and the scenes designed to make us react strongly, failed dismally. as for the historical inaccuracies, all i ahve to say is that i sincerely hope that people do not take this for fact.

so there you have it. a laugh-fest at best.

St. Ives (1998)

a fun adventure

[6/10 · 27 March 2004]

*a possible SPOILER or two*

yes, it was fun to watch. i like all the actors in it, especially Richard E. Grant and Jason Isaacs. the charcters were delightful and the set was marvelously done. bits of the storyline were choppy at times, but that can be forgiven.

jaques st. ives, the main chacter of the film, was very very fun to watch. a handsome young man with a cocky attitude and noble heart who manages to find his long-lost grandfather and brother. now the brother, alain, was the bad guy of the film, but ultimately you felt pity for him.

SPOILER: funny story: near the end, when he was dying and apoligizing and jaques was bending over him my mom kept saying "what're you doing!? don't get too close, you damn fool!" i think she thought that alain, the pitiful malicious brother who is out to kill jaques and who realizes his mistake in the end and shows brotherly love (funny how a sword point in your gut can do that), was suddenly going to jump up and kill them all. personally, i think that would have been a cool ending, but i'm tired of seeing jason isaacs die every time he plays a character i like (namely, a villian).

i would recommend this film if you want something light and fun, with a couple cool sword fights and cute love story.