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Reviews
The Loved One (1965)
Noble Effort, Sloppy Outcome
I really wanted to like this film. The creative team behind it is astonishing and its cast is remarkable.
However the film is obviously written by two people who know how to write novels, not films.
The story just meanders and wanders and rambles and it takes quite some time to figure out exactly what is going on and what action we're supposed to be following.
It's worth watching as a cultural snapshot, it's got that zany 60s laugh- in type humor happening in spades (the scene with the girls in the coffins comes to mind) but as a film itself it is a mess.
Ceský sen (2004)
A Pointless Exercise In Intellectual Cruelty And Media Manipulation
Like most people I was intrigued when I heard the concept of this film, especially the "film makers were then attacked" aspect that the case seems to emphasize, what with the picture on the cover of the film makers being chased by an angry mob.
Then, to watch the film and discover, oh, what they mean by "the film makers were attacked" was some kids threw rocks at a sign and a number of people complained loudly and said "Someone should beat those two kids up." The picture on the cover, "the chase" as it were? Total fabrication. Which I guess ties in with the theme of the film, lying and manipulation to satisfy vain, stupid children with more money and time then sense.
I have no idea what great truth the viewer is supposed to take away from this film. It's like Michael Moore's "Roger & Me", but if "Roger & Me" was Moore mocking the people of Flint. It's completely misdirected and totally inane. Wow! Can you believe that people who suffered under the yoke of Communism would be really excited to have markets full of food? What jerks! And it's not so much, "Look at the effects of capitalism and western media blah blah blah", since it wasn't just that their fake market had comparable prices to the competitors, it was that, as many people in the film say, the prices were absurdly low, someone mentions that they should've known it was fake by how much they were charging for duck. That's not proving anything except that people who are poor, will go to a store that has low prices, bravo fellas, way to stick it to the people on the bottom.
Way to play a stupid practical joke on elderly people. You should be very proud. How about for your next movie you make a documentary about Iraq and show how people there will get really excited for a house without bullet holes in the walls and then, say, "HAHA! NO SUCH HOUSE EXISTS! YOUR SO STUPID AND LOVED TO BE LIED TO BY THE MEDIA!".
Morgan "Please Like Me" Spurlock unleashed this wet fart of a film and it's no surprise since Spurlock as One Hit Wonder prince of the documentary world seems to throw his weight behind any silly sounding concept to stay relevant in a world that really has no need of him.
Avoid like the plague.
Pandorum (2009)
Don't Listen To The Critics Or The Haters
This movie is great.
The people who are bad mouthing the film are people who don't like science fiction to begin with. The people who are parroting "oh, it's just over used scifi plot devices and blah blah blah", don't have any idea what they're talking about.
Films can be genre films. They don't have to re-invent the wheel. You can make a scifi/horror film and it can deal with issues that people deal with in scifi. I'd love to hear these critics share their thoughts on the original Indiana Jones films. "Oh it's just over used action movie plot devices, like fighting Nazis? Please, haven't we seen that before?" You can literally do that with any genre film, it's just critics choose to suckle up to the indie darlings or the movies that have Will Smith in them because they want to get their glorious kiss up words on the box and will pish posh dismiss anything they don't think will get them cool points with generation suck.
So it's a scifi horror film that deals with memory loss, mutants, and the end of the world, what's wrong with that? It seems to me that films should be judged on what they are supposed to do, especially if it's a genre film. I'm not saying in the broad spectrum of, "But is it art?" and "You can read my film from many directions, there is no specific way to read it" kind of art house, janus pictures, black and white, 348 minutes of french tedium, but I'm saying that if a movie is supposed to be a comedy and you have a theater full of people laughing, that film is a success, that film did what it was supposed to do, maybe you didn't care for it's particular brand of humor, but you can't say that it was a bad movie. This is the case for "The Master of Disguise" a film that was a box office bomb and critically reviled, yet, has gone on to do quite well in the rental and home video market, because, it's a movie made for kids and kids love it. Same goes for the last bunch of unwatchable Steve Martin ridiculousness. If you're under the age of 12, chances are, you're going to love it, because it was made for you, it wasn't made for snarky 28 year old hipsters. So while I can't imagine ever wanting to watch The Pink Panther 2, I won't call it a bad film because it's not made for me and who it was made for, love it wholeheartedly.
So in this genre film, of scifi horror, the audience I was with, myself included, were terrified throughout the picture. People jumping and screaming and laughing afterwards about how scared they were. Back to the film. It's a roaring success. The sets are gorgeous and the special effects are fantastic. The film moves quickly and is full of twists and terrifying jump outs. It's just a lot of fun to watch. It's fun to get scared.
The film doesn't go overboard on the gore, it doesn't try to force in sex, it does feature good actors giving great performances. The CGI doesn't look awful like in 90% of the big effects driven films of today. The fear is real and the story, while having its roots firmly planted in some of the well worn treads of other scifi works has enough new and good ideas to make the picture seem fresh.
Don't listen to the jerks, the critics and the haters. If you like to get scared, watch scifi and have fun, check out Pandorum.
Hamlet 2 (2008)
This Poor Movie.
This poor movie. Another premised based bait-and-switch, a'la Be Kind Rewind. I'll explain. You hear about "Be Kind Rewind", two video store guys have to remake all kinds of Hollywood classics, and Michel Gondry is directing! This is going to be a beautiful visual experience with two solid comedic actors at the helm! Then you go and see it and it turns out that the actual movie making part of the film is like 10 minutes and that most of the film is Danny Glover walking around talking about "community". You hear about "Hamlet 2" and you think, "Woah! That sounds hilarious! A sequel to Hamlet! I can't wait to see how they figure that one out!" Then you go and see it and it turns out that the movie is actually about this guy, who is played to absolute perfection by Steve Coogan who I could watch read the phone book if someone would just bloody film it, and he's got issues with his dad and there's maybe some kind of storyline thing going on with his wife and oh he's got all these troubled kids to teach suddenly because they cut the other electives at his Arizona High School. The problem that runs throughout the film is that it plays like half of it is missing. Things are referenced or mentioned that were never explained. David Arquette is a body builder? Apparently. But you wouldn't know except from his line while departing the film altogether regarding a protein shake in the fridge while he carries his vitamin powders. Oh that kid who does the technical stuff is some kind of acid king/drug dealer/party planner? Great, but don't tell us that or explain it to us until the film is half over suddenly have people talking about him like he's been a major character this whole time. Hey here's some title cards to break up the film, whoops, now we inexplicably have stopped using them. Hey, here's a narrator narrating, whoops, now he's inexplicably disappeared from the film as well! This film also can't tell if it wants to be a foul mouthed hard R rated comedy or if it wants to be an inspirational pg13 comedy, its too yucky high school inspirational (the bad kids come together to do something really great and end up liking their teacher they were formerly mean to, oh and their behavior change is completely and totally inexplicable, most of the things in this movie are inexplicable and not in a good David Lynch kind of way, but in a , "Man, no one paid attention to editing this did they?" kind of way) to be a hard R comedy and it's too foul mouthed and r rated to be an inspirational high school movie. AND the worst thing is that the whole big build up, about Hamlet bleepin' 2 is that you barely see any of the play, the trailer makes it look like there are two parts to the film, they decide to put on the play and then they put it on. But in reality the actual play is just about the last 10 minutes and yes, the stuff we see is funny, but it's barely anything at all. So much humor could've been pulled from the brilliant premise that is Hamlet 2, but instead it's glossed over, relying on "Rock Me Sexy Jesus" and "Raped in The Face" to carry the brunt of the musical humor, other than that, it's clunky and forced. Everything in this movie is half a**ed except for Steve Coogan's performance. The editing, the writing, all really disappointing for such a smart premise. All that being said, I did laugh quite a bit, but the incredibly poor quality of the film itself was distracting. Another film killed by it's all too apparent desire to be a "cult classic". If this film had had no budget and was made independently it might be an immortal piece of comedy gold, coming from some random film weirdo's twisted psyche, but instead it's desperately pandering to the void left by the death of independent film in America. Watch it on DVD while doing something else.
Fucking Girls Again (2005)
Anyone for Golf?
Golf balls, baseball bats, fists, Belladonna puts up all up the a$$ in this fantastically disturbing amazing porno. Featuring an absurdly pregnant belladonna. Makes for oddly captivating watching. You don't want to watch it, but you just can't stop. She hates them, she loves them. Some girls get lovely lesbian treatments from Belladonna, well as lovely as Belladonna can be. Belladonna being lovely just means she isn't fisting you or shoving your head in a toilet. Lots of toys, lots of emotion, lots of fun. And man man man is she wicked pregnant. I'm not familiar with the first one which I imagine to be called simply Belladonna's F***ing Girls.
Sin City (2005)
The "Waking Life" of violence, if "Waking Life" was good....
Incredible performances from an ensemble cast. Mickey Rourke in the role of a life time. Completely inspired casting in even the smallest of roles, Rutger Hauer as Bishop Roark, Powers Boothe as Senator Roark, Michael Madsen as Bruce Willis's partner, and good god almighty you always knew Elijah Wood was creepy but you didn't know why you felt that way. Well here's your answer. The first actual comic book film in the way that it actually does an unbelievable job of combining film and art, not art like "but is it art?" talking drawings. An amazing portrayal of gender roles, women as in need or psychotic amazons, men as scumbags or noble scumbags. And let's not forget guest director's Quentin Tarantino's contribution which I will allude to but not reference directly to give you the challenge of picking it out yourself. Frank Miller's most successful foray into film (lets please forget Robocop 2 and 3) and Robert Rodriguez's opus. Groundbreaking, visually stunning, consistently good use of cgi, not over use like most Hollywood pictures today. Kick back, enjoy the holy hell out of it.