Change Your Image
MediSin
Reviews
BloodRayne (2005)
Read: Ed Wood could learn from Uwe Boll
A few weeks ago, a friend of mine convinced me to watch "Alone in the Dark". I will probably regret that day for a long time, and to say the least, I was forced to question my taste in friends. Little did I know that I would stumble upon this movie, unsuspecting and oblivious to its director.
I will say one thing for Uwe Boll. His name should be on the front image of every single one of his movies' DVD releases. In bold. Probably in some kind of neon color. Maybe twice, just to make sure.
This movie is just bad on so many levels. If you are looking for Tarantino-ish amounts of blood, look no further. But where Tarantino manages to overdose on the gore in a manner that makes you hoarse with laughter, Boll manages to actually make you want to curl up and cry yourself to sleep. The sheer terror.
And the bad acting. Boll persistently manages to get big names to work on his films. The warm, lovable, peaceful image of Ben Kingsley as Ghandi will forever be tainted by his utter lack of facial muscles and the offensively bad hair styling in Bloodrayne.
The bad lines. "You are such a suck-up!" Do I really need to say more? The movie tries (and, unsurprisingly, fails) to carry its lines in a cloak&dagger-ish manner, to be repeatedly interrupted by comments like the one mentioned. This even beats Ultraviolet's "Are you mental?".
In a world of great injustice, of people dying by the thousands each moment, of a cloned human as the leader of one of its most powerful nations, and a tradition of blaming violence on video games and rock music, Uwe Boll will be allowed to continue to make awful movies. But maybe, just maybe, IMDb will implement the option of giving a movie a negative rating.
Ultraviolet (2006)
Couldn't write a spoiler if I wanted to
I really like action movies, and I've come to appreciate Milla Jovovich as an athletic, multifaceted actress. For comparison, watch The Messenger and Resident Evil 1. I also loved Equilibrium, although it had a few weaknesses, it was an awesome movie, and did Kurt Wimmer good credit.
Ultraviolet, however, may prove a low point in both Jovovich's and Wimmer's filmography. The movie simply has NO STORYLINE. Even if I wanted to write a spoiler, I couldn't do so, because there really is absolutely no story that I could betray. The film moves seamlessly from one action sequence to another, has ABSOLUTELY CRAPPY CG, and the characters cannot even be described as 2-dimensional. If anything, they're about as emotionally intense as a paper clip. If you've watched anything remotely using CG these last few years, you'll be horrified at the CG sequences this movie hits its viewers with. It's abominably blocky, blatantly unrealistic, the textures look live they've been stolen from a decade old Corel Draw add on CD, in some parts the action sequences even stutter, which is integrated as a stylistic element in some of the later parts of the movie. None of this can hide the crappy quality of the sequences, however.
Since it is *IN* to have child actors in action movies again (recap: Terminator 2, Mercury Puzzle), this film also boasts one, though thankfully with very few lines. Apparently, "Six" alias Cameron Bright was denied his lollipop, as he persistently keeps a scowl in his face even when it doesn't suit the scene.
From the trailer, it wasn't unquestionably obvious that this movie would be about vampires - I'm sorry, *hemophages* -, which in light of recent blockbusters leads me to believe that this addition was made to the script after the numbers for Underworld: Evolution were in. It really doesn't add anything to the already non-existent storyline, but gave the make-up department a reason to go to Walmart to shop for fake teeth. Has anybody even reviewed the movie before it was sent to theaters? Not only is the make-up work and digital remastering crappy at the best of times, but the props are ridiculous. In one and the same scene, Jovovich's face is well-textured and irregular (read: natural) when viewed from the side, but once the camera goes into frontal close-up, her face is so ruthlessly digitally softened up that it looks like a latex mask.
These are just the things that irritated me during the first half of the movie, before it degenerated even further into a remarkably bloodless mayhem of severed limbs, bullet-time shoot-outs and crappy CG sequences.
A few days before Ultraviolet, I watched Deep Rising. While the latter may not be a gem of movie history, it also has a very nice female co-lead in the form of Famke Janssen, it has steady action sequences and - for its time - acceptable CG effects. I really should have stayed home, invited a few friends, and watched Deep Rising instead of spending precious money and time on a movie so useless, so utterly devoid of character development and storyline, so insultingly bad CG, that I'm sure my IQ must've dropped several points just from sitting through it to the end.
Don't watch this movie. It doesn't even serve as an amusingly bad movie, because at least after the first motorcycle chase, you'll feel insulted by the lack of work and dedication that should have gone into producing this.
Mutant X (2001)
What a waste of time!
There are worse series and movies than this, but Mutant X didn't miss the "absolutely awful" mark by much. The problem of this series isn't shoddy camera work or crappy writing (although those two sure didn't help), but the penultimate inability of the actors to actually act! Yes, maybe I shouldn't get so worked up about some TV series that got canceled after three seasons, but someone somewhere is responsible for casting these actors, and none of them even managed to get past the two-facial-expressions-per-episode stage.
Example #1: Victoria Pratt (Shalimar Fox - what a name. She's supposed to be some catlike being, and her last name is that of a canine.) Expression #1: Blank face. I suppose she must have been thinking "nobody's gonna look at my face with the body I have". Expression #2: Pursed lip smile. You know, real actresses can actually make this one work (Angelina Jolie, anyone?), but it takes a bit of exercise.
Example #2: John Shea (Adam Kane - this name, only given after Fox's lawsuit, is actually better than Adam Xero, which sounds a lot like a brand of recycled paper) Expression #1: ARGH-Must-Concentrate! No wonder he has so many wrinkles. I've seen him use this expression in a number of movies. It almost never fails to carry the message across: Why did I become an actor? With this face alone, I could win Sumo championships! Expression #2: Relieved Smile. Must have been one helluva visit to the restrooms for him to look that smug.
Now, I agree that right after the person responsible for casting is severely chastised, it's the turn of whoever came up with the costumes. I agree that the Bad Guy does look awfully reminiscent of Andy Warhol. And "Very Evil Lines (TM)" don't help to improve his image, when I consistently get the impression that he is looking to the left of whomever he is currently speaking to, as if he was reading his lines off a billboard.
Yes, for about half an episode, this show manages to exude some kind of comic charm. After about 20 minutes, however, you cannot help but begin to think that the actors and story writers are actually trying to be earnest. If you have ever, at all, sometime in your life, read even a single issue of the Xmen (or, seen one of the admittedly somewhat disappointing movies, or been lucky enough to catch the cartoon series on TV), then you will probably agree that even the worst Xmen story "pwns" the living daylights out of this show. Yes. I know Avi Arad is at least partially to blame for this show. But for all the good he did in assisting with the cartoon series and the slightly disappointing movies (TM), he's still gonna get it for this one.
Angel at the Entrance to Heaven: So, who have we here?
Avi Arad: Avi Arad.
Angel: Ah, yes. You helped 207 elderly ladies across the street, rescued three children from drowning, gave half your income to charity, saved a small African nation from bankruptcy - OH! What have we here?! You created the TV series Mutant X? Straight down it is for you, fella! Good riddance!
No, I'm not bitter. I'm just really sad about the time I spent watching this series (gladly, only 3 episodes). Time I will never get back (and might later on come to miss).
My advice: Stay away from this. There are much better series on TV and down the Sci/Fi DVD aisles at your local store. If you really really REALLY want a superhero/mutant series, get the original Xmen cartoon series, or try a peek at the Xmen Evolution series, if for nothing else, then to see Rogue as a confused, conflicted Goth teen.
Anthony Zimmer (2005)
Weak copy of "Cypher"
Anthony Zimmer is an average suspension movie, but if you have seen Cypher (http://imdb.com/title/tt0284978), you know how the movie is going to unwind from the first five minutes on. The story is very similar (not to say, in some parts identical), although in Cypher, the main character actually "deleted" his memory, so the entire "Who's the guy?" game actually makes sense.
As has been mentioned elsewhere, even when alone, Zimmer doesn't act like himself, and it doesn't really make sense why, unless to lead on the viewer. The movie has a lot of potential, but doesn't go far beyond the average, which is a pity. Sophie Marceau pulls off her part nicely (you don't really see her 40 years, do you?), and tragically outshines everybody else. The characters remain flat and two-dimensional (even the main character...), and the final twist just doesn't come off right (especially since most viewers will have the identity shuffle figured out by now).
If you haven't seen Cypher, maybe this movie works for you. If you have seen it, this really isn't a lot of fun, as it gets boring pretty quickly. It gets an average rating for the nice camera work and Sophie Marceau, but I'm sad to say it would probably have scored higher if the producers had directly copied Cypher.