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mightyjalapeno
Reviews
Squawk Box (1994)
I always thought I dreamed this show...
For years, this show wasn't even on IMDb here, even after I told them about the show, and who was on it, and what it was about. I guess someone with a bit more clout got ahold of some of the web-dorks at IMDb, because here it is! Proof I didn't dream it! I loved this show (yes, especially the street hockey interludes. "GLACIER!" "VIKINGS!" "EVIL DEAD!" as my personal favorite.) The dad on the motorized armchair bombing around, Dov Tiefenbach's curiously good acting skills, and the utterly random skits that played to my very warped sense of humor.
This show needs to be DVD'd. Now.
The Cave (2005)
Bury This Movie In A Cave
beats his head against a wall* Hold on, I'll be with you in a minute... *beats his head a few more times, then smiles at you* Thats better.
I'd like to start off by saying something to Hollywood studios: Why? What could have possibly possessed you that this film was WORTHY of making, was WORTHY of a major studio release? They basically took The Relic, and mixed it with Pitch Black, and even threw in the supporting male star of the latter film. To make matters worse, the editing appears to have been done by an epileptic, and the special effects by someone who just read the "PhotoShop 7.0 Bible". Lastly, the dialogue could very well have been created by the MS Office Grammar Checker.
This movie has, really, no redeeming features. EVERY good scene was revealed by the commercials. Several parts of the movie are just patently retarded, contradicting the scenes around it. There's a glacier located directly adjacent to a PERMANENTLY BURNING LAKE OF METHANE, and strangely the air is perfectly breathable despite being COMPLETELY sealed off from the outside world. Several parts, such as how an armed troupe of medieval soldiers made it through 2.4 miles of underground river, are just never explained. It was just.... it was just scenes, strung together, sometimes with bits tacked on PURELY to explain in plain English what has only been inferred with all the subtlety of an atomic f*****g bomb.
And the ending.... oh, my God, the ending... I almost demanded my money back just how hackneyed and retarded the ending was. The star dies, the token black guy is stuffed into a cab, and... and... I'd reveal it, but I'm not that cruel, even if you never see this movie.
Sin City (2005)
Movie Review: Sin City
Movie Review: Sin City I just went and saw this movie tonight. I may have to go see it tomorrow, if my wife lets me. And cheap Tuesday. With luck, I can see it in a different city next weekend.
But enough with the editorializing. This is a movie that will definitely polarize the viewers. From what I could tell from the gasps, yells, laughs, and hooting, my fellow audience-members liked it. Some people on the way out were saying bad things about it. It was hard for me to keep from pounding their skulls flat on the hard, cold, packed earth of an unholy barn floor.
Whoops, editorializing again. My adrenaline is still a little bit high.
From the man who brought respectability back to comics, and the man who could inexplicably produce "El Mariachi" and "Spy Kids 3D" in the same lifetime, comes Frank Miller's Sin City. Not once does it shy away from the source material (except for Jessica Alba, who has a no-nudity contract clause). Marv does everything that you'd expect of an indestructible killing machine with a soft fluffy teddy bear heart wrapped in bloody razor wire. Hartigan is the man... bar none, Hartigan is the man. Nameless the Salesman, although only in two scenes, perhaps drives home most poignantly the morality of Basin City. Nancy, skinny little Nancy Callahan, is perhaps the only innocent soul in the city.
In Sin City, in the very, very broadest terms and with an extremely loose definition of the word "good", the good guys win. Marv finds justice in dispensing of pain and blood, but it is justice. Hartigan, in the name of the law and love, finds justice in sacrifice. Dwight and Gail protect the way of life of the Old City, and it just so happens that a whole mother-loving pile of bodies gets left in the wake. Elija Wood, good old Frodo Baggins, gets whats coming to him with a smile on his silent lips. That was such a weird sentence to write.
The cinematography is dead-on. Some panels of the book look just like the movie. Some panels of the movie look just like the book. The attention to detail is remarkable. The Woman In The Red Dress's eyes glow green for the second that a lighter is held to her cigarette. The transition from two-color monochrome animation to four color movie (black, white, gray, and blood) and back is seamless. Only on a very few occasions can you tell that the background is green-screened, when the motion doesn't 100% synch up. Even so, 99% synch rate is pretty damn good.
Although there were...two... five...ten.... uhm.... seventy-odd murders in this movie, and pretty much every main character (and even some hot supporting characters) end up soaked in blood at one point, this is still a marvellous set piece, beautifully crafted, and filled with characters as rich and colorful (if the tiniest bit wooden *cough*Madsen*cough*) as any you are likely to encounter. I recommend this for anyone who likes film noir, violence, or that feeling in your stomach when your entire life has led up to a single hard decision, and you go with what your heart knows is right, and the world can go **** itself if it doesn't agree.
10 out of 10.