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563,904 | 102,816 | 90,859 | 1 |
Moribund
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There may be some major spoilers in this review . I wish to give a frank , honest and revealing review of this film . So I'll begin with ? ? What were they thinking ? This has got to be one of the most preposterously and poorly conceived films ever . And I mean EVER ! Listen to this . The script was taken from the novel FAIR GAME by Paula Gosling ( which was later turned into a film of the same name that bears NO resemblance to this ) and has nothing really to do with that novel . But the script was also taken from Stallone's original script for Beverly Hills Cop ( as he was supposed to be the original Axel Foley ) and it bears no resemblance to that film either . And in Beverly Hills Cop 2 you can see a poster for this movie in Judge Reinhold's apartment . And Brigitte Neilson even stars in Beverly Hills Cop 2 as well as this movie . Weird . But more about the plot . There is this crazy guy called ' The Night-Slasher ' ( so called because he slashes at night ) who has a huge gang of ' hunters ' ( nameless goons ) and he wants to take over the world by creating a ' new order ' . Whatever that means , I don't know . But apparently it consists of driving around in a beat up van and murdering blondes . A rather odd strategy indeed and not one that I'm sure will work as Stallone is on the case . But of course his Superiors don't want his help . They would rather sort it out on their own in a ' quiet and civilised ' manner . They don't do a very good job of that as all they do is stand about the Police Station saying , ' We've got to catch this guy ' . But Stallone has better ideas . He goes downtown to shakedown tattoo artists and cross-dressing transvestites . That's no joke . Because of the 80's music playing over these scenes we cannot hear what Stallone is saying but I assume it is something like ' Hey , have you guys seen the Night Slasher ' . Good job he's on the case huh ? But matters are complicated when a beautiful model ( Brigitte Neilson ) witnesses the pointless murder of a random woman . The Night Slasher memorises her license plate before making sure that he shows enough of his face for her to recognise him in a line-up . So Stallone takes her out to the mountains where he murders all of the Night Slashers ' goons without getting a scratch on him or running out of ammo . Then he leads the Night Slasher into a furnace ( which just happens to ' be there ' in the middle of a vineyard ) where he hangs the Night Slasher out to dry . Cosmatos made Rambo : First Blood Part II in widescreen , but not this movie . I reckon if there were a bigger screen and more thought given to composition and style this could have been a worthwhile experience . After all terrible movies can still look good ( Broken Arrow for example ) and it would have been slightly less embarrassing and cringeworthy to watch . Even at 87 minutes this film is REALLY pushing it . There are no decent characters or any memorable dialogue or anything at all to recommend it . Sure , you can watch it for the wrong reasons . You can laugh at George Pan Cosmatos ' uninspired direction and Stallone thinking that he could turn the Cobra into a franchise . We should thank our lucky stars that didn't happen . Stick with the Rambo movies instead and leave this mistake alone .
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564,369 | 102,816 | 118,956 | 1 |
Not up to much .
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I used to have this on DVD and I only watched it once . Perhaps this is because the film is quite boring and even the presence of the beautiful Famke Janssen cannot balance the crapiness out . Every set looks the same as the last and it's just so dull . It should have been gorier and milked it's hardly original concept for all it's worth . The dialogue simply stinks too . Jerry Goldsmith's music is below par also which is strange for him . Sommers went on to direct The Mummy and The Mummy Returns and from these 3 films it's easy to determine how most of his career will be . Skip it big time .
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564,728 | 102,816 | 120,851 | 1 |
Worse than terrible
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This is not a typical Dolph movie nor is it a typical obscure film . I mean it's obscure , but not in a cool new find way . Perhaps it's due to bad writing and directing but it just seems so different in terms of dialogue and plot development . For most of the movie Dolph sits around and drinks but after about an hour he finally gets down to some action . He also sounds different . His voice is gravelly . Like he's smoked 100 cigars a day for a decade . But I guess this is him just getting into character , too bad it's not interesting but it's nice to see the effort . There should plenty for Dolph to get his teeth into here and lots of opportunity for a hot-potato of a movie . Land mines are a delicate issue but at some point in the movie it all collapses into standard action-man territory . The beginning is badly directed , some shootouts seems really false and the trailer is , by far , the WORST I have ever seen . The DVD has plain old stereo sound with a pan and scanned fullscreen picture . Avoid it .
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564,080 | 102,816 | 800,199 | 1 |
Racism in disguise
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The very first words uttered in this TV movie are ' Almost every bad thing that has ever happened to me has been because of a black person . ' A rather alarming opening line and it doesn't let up . Joseph is a teacher at school in London in which 70 % of the kids are black . He knows it's tough for black kids to get a start in life so he tries his hardest to make men out of them . But there is one really nasty kid who lies about Joseph hitting him for a joke . But his mum gets behind it and Joseph is eventually fired for nothing . He tries to fight back but is made a scapegoat for the anger of the black community and his credibility and life are shattered . Living on the streets he is taken in by a kindly elderly black woman and begins his long haul back to respectability again . Along the way he is constantly talking to the camera about how ridiculous and annoying black stereotypes and culture are . If this were a white guy he'd be hung by the PC police , so I'm assuming that the disguise for this blatant xenophobia is the fact that Joseph is a black person too . But you really have to wonder of where exactly the inspiration for this rubbish came from . It's really easily written and has about as much grace and civility as a sledgehammer to the balls . Originally called ' Fck Black People ' I'm amazed any non-KKK member producer even dared to pick it up . Certainly not a film you should devote any amount of time to .
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564,574 | 102,816 | 285,446 | 1 |
Eesh ! A horrible , horrible game .
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Man alive , is this game bad or what ? The graphics are way below par , even if it were on a playstation 1 , never mind a Gamecube . The gameplay is pathetic and the camera movements disorientating . What a worthless game ! I totally love Warner's Batman animation and it's cool that they do all the games in this way . Batman : Vengeance could well have turned out great as they got off to a good start by keeping all the Gothic visuals and voice actors but they seriously stumbled when it came to playability and graphics . The result is a boring game that looks incredibly cheap and is no fun to play whatsoever . I really must stress how bad the graphics are . Don't let the color schemes fool you . I've seen better stuff on a Commodore 64 .
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564,411 | 102,816 | 393,735 | 1 |
The piece of crap .
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You want to know how disgustingly , morbidly PC Disney has become ? They put trousers on a monkey because they are afraid to show naked animals in case parents are offended . Can you believe that ? What is this world coming to ? Walt would be spinning in his grave if he were not cryogenically frozen . Tim Allen plays Dave Douglas , a bad dad who neglects his wife and kids and does way too much overtime . He's a lawyer you see and his current big case involves an animal research company who make poodles into frogs or something like that . Their goal is to make the elixir of everlasting life so naturally one would make a poodle into a frog to achieve such a noble ambition . Dave is bit by one of the dogs and now is infected with dogness . This causes him to periodically turn into a dog and ' hilarity ' ensues as he tries to keep up his case and maintain his family life . Why on earth would you want to see this ? Tim Allen has already played a neglectful dad who learns important lessons after undergoing a weird metamorphosis in 2 Santa Clause movies so he's not broadening his role much . And how many movies are there with bad dads ( always the dad and never the mum , eh ? ) who are usually lawyers who learn the same crap ? About 86 billion ! I can understand why Tim Allen is in this as he is constantly scraping the bottom of the sludge barrel but how the hell did they get Robert Downey Jnr , Danny Glover AND Philip Baker Hall do to this ? They must owe their bookmakers a fair whack . No one in their right mind could read this script and find it worthy of their talents . So not only does the story stink of the worst clichés but it's woefully misjudged and badly directed . The scene where Mrs . Douglas confronts her dog husband and hears him bark ' I wuff woo ' is pretty much the most disturbing scene I've ever come across . And I've watched snuff . When they look into each others eyes I seriously thought she'd start making out with him . And when the film finishes . . . is Dave still going to turn into a dog ? Is he cured ? Who knows ? Do I really care that much ? Why ? Why do I do this myself ? If you really hate life then see this movie . If you are of sound body and mind then save the pennies for guns , drugs and ill hookers . It's money better spent . Trust me !
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563,804 | 102,816 | 120,912 | 1 |
Men in cheap suits
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For such a belated ( and now unwanted ) sequel to feel so much like a quick-rehash to cash in on the original's success is weird . This movie had 5 years ( and some false-starts ) to refine and for the filmmakers to really make it something special for the fans and to pay tribute to the brilliant Men in Black . It never happened . Instead we have a plot ( that doesn't even make sense ) so wafer thin it's almost invisible and repeats of old scenes . Always , always , always a bad , bad , bad mistake for a sequel . NEVER homage or try to be smart by repeating scenes . John Carpenter did this with Escape from LA and that was lost on almost all audiences . Just like what has happened with MIB II . I did expect this to be a huge hit . But it's gone largely unnoticed because it's asking for money for old rope . David Cross ( who played the morgue attendant in the original ) has the only funny scene and I swear any other laughs will be no more than exaggerated smiles . You'll want to enjoy , but won't . Lara Flynn Boyle is not the uber - [ female ] her character should have been . And Rosario Dawson has NOTHING to do in her role at all . I don't want to say that she is a bad actress because the part offered her so little to do . Not even so little . It was nothing . Never before in my life have I seen such a pointless character . All she did was stand around with her eyes open in amazement . That's it . Had her character been called Laura MacGuffin instead of Laura Vasquez it would have been a tiny bit acceptable . What IS the deal with that silly ' light ' nonsense ? Plus the chemistry between Smith and Jones is gone . It's simply not there and there is no spark . Jones originally didn't even want to do this film ( Linda Fiorentino was supposed to return ) and he seems like someone totally different . First time round he was wise and crafty . Here he is just a gear in the machine . There's no magic . No comic timing . MIB II should have been one of those surprising sequels that blows the original out of the water . Like Gremlins 2 for example . Spielberg was producer on that movie too . It came 6 years after the first . MIB II had 5 . And it seems like they just hastily threw it together in a couple of weeks . It is so puzzling . And what is even weirder is that the Men In Black Limited Edition DVD has a trailer for MIB II . And that DVD was released in Fall 2000 ! ( ages before this film's eventual release , where they aiming for a summer 2001 release ? ) And the trailer for MIB II on this DVD is anamorphically enhanced at 2 . 35 : 1 . But the actual film itself is 1 . 85 : 1 . I found this to be one of the most strangest things of all . It's practically false advertising . Oh well , I don't want to give the film . I really don't . Not when MIB deserves a sequel so much better . And by giving it I am , in a way , insulting the original . But I must . Sorry .
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564,452 | 102,816 | 203,009 | 1 |
Oh No . This won't do at all .
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How gloriously camp this drivel is . Remember Riverdance and Lord Of The Dance and how everyone thot it was so cool at the time ? The same applies to this movie . And the story is up to very little indeed , in fact it is like Grease mixed with Luhrmann's version of R+J . Very weak and totally unoriginal . A movie is a movie and musicals are musicals . Plain and simple . Any attempt to merge the 2 have never been met with successful results in my opinion . If you want ironclad proof just take a look at Bollywood . This should have seriously just been a Broadway hit and not a big screen hit . But , of course , if every critic and every woman who sees this with all over her girlfriends like it and if they rave about how good it is because everyone else says it is great and they only went to see it because people are telling them that it is a great movie ( fact ! ) then they are only going to watch the great movie that it everyone says that it is . Me ? I just watch the movie for what it is . No bias or pre-movie opinions . And what I saw was a stinker . Almost everything in this movie seems so forced and shoved in our faces . Every shot is cluttered with overly decorated sets , too many occurrences and detail to register with us in 2 seconds cuts ( I ain't seeing it twice if that's the idea ) , heinous ADR that is about as unconvincing as Orson Welles masquerading as Mickey Mouse , VERY bad CGI that Luhrmann seems to be in love with and too many androgynous and weird looking characters . This film is all visual , or , if I were unoriginal ( like the movie ) I would say all style and no substance . Take away the indulgent and increasingly annoying sets / backdrops and all the jumping around and dancing and you are left with ? what ? A tedious movie that is good only because people say it is good . Another victim of ' Insider Syndrome ' . For me , every set in a movie should , at the same time , be realistic and reflect tone and mood of the scene . EVERY-SINGLE-SET in Moulin Rouge is overly-decorated to the point that we cannot tell what the set is . They are and eyesore , ugly to look at and extremely garish . A representation of everything this movie stands for : indulgence , ego , campiness and pointless extravagance . Lowest marks ? sorry . Oh and one last thing ? how come no one speaks French in France ?
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563,812 | 102,816 | 195,714 | 1 |
Seriously bad film
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I thought the spate of teen-based horror flicks was over . I thought that by the time we got to I Still Know What You've Forgotten Some Summers Ago ( or whatever ) that it was all finally milked for every penny it was worth ( ! ) . I was wrong . I can't think of a plot more grotesquely stupid that of Final Destination . Five minutes into it I predicted every single frame that was still to come . Kerr Smith's character irritated beyond comprehension . Every 2 seconds he started a fight for NO REASON and was bullheaded and annoying through-out the whole film . While some of you may think that Final Destination is different from the rest of teen-horror flicks out there it has one very-annoying similarity that no can deny . And that is . . . actors in the mid-to-late 20s playing teenagers . It gets me every time .
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564,623 | 102,816 | 161,081 | 1 |
Awful film
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I've seen thousands of movies but WLB is seriously very , very bad . I am shocked that Ford / Pfeiffer / Zemeckis actually churned out a film so awful . Considering how many cool movies Zemeckis has created in the past such as the BTTF trilogy , Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Cast Away , plus his involvement with the ' Dark Castle ' movies ( House on Haunted Hill , Thir13en Ghosts , Ghost Ship-all graphic and way scary ) and Tales From The Crypt for WLB to be such a boring affair is bizarre . Thank goodness I bought this DVD cheap , I would have felt so criminally cheated if I had paid full price for it . Never before has 2 hours seemed so unfathomably long . Every tedious minute is dragged out and every second is felt . This wouldn't be so bad if the plot and story were bearable but the whole thing is so full of holes and embarrassing contrivances that it becomes too hard to swallow . For such a long , drawn-out and tedious affair to have a boring , tension-free ending is unreal . Considering the talent behind this film it's strange for it to be so bad . I wouldn't recommend it under any circumstances . The DVD is in 2 . 35 : 1 anamorphic widescreen with Dolby / DTS 5 . 1 sound .
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564,251 | 102,816 | 448,010 | 1 |
I really don't like this game
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Not only do I hate the animation style and the fact that it's nothing but a bunch of mini-games put together but when you fail at whatever task and have to start again it takes too long . Yes , the animation looks good from a technical point of view but all people appear in silhouette . I don't feel any connection to the so-called ' story ' because I am basically playing with what appears to be shop window mannequins . And the music is annoying as hell too . The focus of this game seems to concentrate far too much on how to incorporate the features of the Nintendo DS into the gameplay rather than making the gameplay any good , or bearable . Sega and Sonic Team should be ashamed for making a game this bland and bad . They should have spent the time and money on something much better .
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564,506 | 102,816 | 273,517 | 1 |
Seriously dull , not scary and moronic
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Judging by Anna Paquin's performance in this so not scary ' horror ' movie you'd never believe she was an Oscar-winning actress . Thankfully , everyone else ' acting ' along with her is equally terrible and only the most observant will notice her sleepwalking . The story is some total garbage about a family moving into a haunted house . The youngest kid sees ghosts but his parents are typically ignorant and pay no attention to multiple calls for help or obvious signs of ghost activity . For the bulk of the film nothing is happening . And director Jaume Balagueró appears to know only two camera moves : zoom in ? zoom out . The editing and sound design are everything the film relies on to give it power . Unfortunately , they're both clichéd . The assembly of the horror / scare scenes is of the jump - cut - to - sudden - burst - of - noise variety and the sound adds ' spooky ' rumbling to an otherwise lifeless moment . Ooooooohhhhh ! ! ! The plot makes no sense . It makes up its own vague rules then sets about breaking them in order to allow certain plot contrivances . None of it is interesting and you'll be bored to tears by the long , slow and suicidally drawn-out ending . In regards to Anna Paquin's ( gorgeous as she is ) acting , just check out the scene near the beginning when she's arguing with her mother on the porch . The timing , tone of voice and mannerism is completely off . It's rather awkward viewing . I've seen glacier's move faster than this .
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563,878 | 102,816 | 229,260 | 1 |
Incongruous
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Book of Shadows does not make any sense . No , it's not that I'm so dumb I cannot understand it , it's actually that the film is so simple in it's conflictions that I am surprised everyone else hasn't seen right through it . Showing slight promise in the early scenes where mockumentary seems to taken to a higher , more sophisticated level than the first , the film quickly collapses into stupidness after about 30 minutes of mildly effective mystery . Basically , 5 idiots ( one of them with a basketball sized goiter on his neck ) try to figure out why the whole world went nuts over BWP back in 1999 , rather than if the BW really exists or not . 2 of them are writing a book on mass hysteria , one is a tour guide with a dodgy ( and totally unexplained ) past , the other a witch , the other a Goth ( ? ) . After spending the night in the ruins of Rustin Parr's house they awake to find their camera's destroyed and their paperwork shredded . Was it the Blair Witch ? Hardly , she's not real . Right ? Don't look at me for answers , the film doesn't contain any . In hoping that the audience would rather be confused than bored , any old crap is thrown at us to keep us in the dark . The original film was excused for this . It was a low budget independent movie and NOT a Hollywood film . BW2 IS a Hollywood film and fails on every basic level . Even the tiny , tiny irony in being called Book of Shadows , I believe , is a fluke / coincidence . Any other attempt at irony is purely textbook . Ooohhh mass hysteria ! And if the Blair Witch ISN'T real ( as this film repeatedly states ) why are their physical impossibilities taking place ? Why do they all go mad ( mass hysteria my ass ) ? Why , if they are naked , do they conveniently have underwear on when it comes to frontal shots , but take them off for any other angle ? What's the deal with tour guide dude's past ? It's all trash and all pointless . A cheap , quick cash-in and a total insult to the honesty and simplicity of the original . I paid 36p for this ! The DVD is in 1 . 85 : 1 anamorphic widescreen and Dolby 5 . 1 with some rubbish extras .
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564,122 | 102,816 | 901,507 | 1 |
The dredge , the filth , the absolute scum of British cinema
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What a bogus title . Slight Promotion of the Yob might have been a more fitting moniker , methinks . But seriously , what is it with the fascination for making these movies ? I don't get it myself . Britain is stuck between two unrealistic extremes when it comes to being the backdrop for movies . The Americans portray this island like everyone is upper class , has tea with the Queen , lives on ancestral estates and has names like Alexandra Toffington-Heath . I find this kind of ludicrously outdated stereotyping rather offensive , as a matter of fact . But when we make our own movies we either back-up this idiotic myth ( Four Weddings and a Funeral , anything with walking skeleton Keira Knightley in a frock ) or counter it with an endless torrent of East End / Essex gangster crap . Ever since Guy Richie ( more famous for being Madonna's husband than anything else ) made the slightly entertaining , tongue in cheek Lock , Stock in 1998 , a long list of wannabe British directors took it upon themselves to emulate his success . Talentless hacks have come out of the woodwork and have exploited the low-class tastes of our increasing ned culture by cranking out endless guff like Essex Boys , The Football Factory , Love , Honour and Obey , The Business and the downright diabolical Revolver . Basically , the kind of films that only get good reviews in tawdry lads mags and only because they're paid to deliberately come up with some crass sound-bite like ' The best British film since Trainspotting ' every time . Honestly , the amount of times I have seen that particular quote doesn't even bear thinking about . But now , just when you thought that the fascination with Cockney or Essex slime was over , we have the ' true ' story of Carlton Leech gracing our screens . Why anyone would want to torture their minds by suffering this garbage is beyond me . The only reason I went to see it is because I honestly didn't know what it was about . I will do more research next time . Carlton Leech is a football hooligan ( the dream of every young British boy ) who is hired by some scum to be a doorman ( cue amusing montage of various beatings ) . He is then hired by some other scum to supervise drug dealings . Then more scum appear and hire him . . . blah blah blah . Before you know , Carlton has gone quite mental . But then something really odd happens . Craig Fairbrass ( destined to play one and only character for his entire life ) enters the film and it goes off into this tangent that hardly ever includes Carlton Leech . So much for it being a film about him then . Various other scum come and go and there's plenty of bloodshed and killing for people who like that sort of thing . Roland Manookian ( who , like his pals Fairbrass and Danny Dyer , will only play the one type of character for his whole ' career ' ) turns up and degrades all British young men everywhere by portraying yet another wimpy criminal loser with no aspirations other than his next date-rape or whatever . Cue more beatings and bloodshed before a triple massacre at the end . Carlton Leech finally comes back ( not that I was missing him or anything ) and does nothing but observe . And that's the movie . Sounds great doesn't it ? Doesn't it ? No ? Being a true story doesn't validate it . Having nostalgic references to the 80s and 90s doesn't validate it . Rise of the Footsoldier has as much integrity of an 18-rated episode of Eastenders ( only more miserable and with less skill ) . If you want to leave the cinema feeling like you need to wash then this is the excrement for you . Personally , I have had enough of these misleading films where Britain is filled with the underclass who indulge in drugs , sex , drugs , misogyny and drugs . . . and drugs . Britain is where history comes from . However , films like this mountain of feces only encourage more and more people to become philistines . If their ain't no real culture out there , then no one will want to be a part of it .
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564,541 | 102,816 | 81,749 | 1 |
Stupid rubbish
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There's barely a scene to be had that does not take place in a bar ( with a Hugh Hefner lookalike deliberately cast as the barman ) in which women dance around and sing pedestrian country music songs . There are some badly choreographed fights , cliched Hick-talk , dull dialogue , non-existent plots ( ? ) that think they exist because without them there would be no movie . A bunch of women question their love lives ( marrying a guy who is much like Cletus : The Slack Jawed Yokel from the Simpsons is not their idea of love ) , cheat on their husbands with guys who are virtually no different and do their bit for girl power and equal rights . Nonsense ! Why was this made ? Like anyone will actually be interested . But what more can I expect from a 1980 TV movie-of-the-week ? Oh and I forgot to mention . . . a bull is let loose in the aforementioned bar in the films climax . OH THE EXCITEMENT !
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563,806 | 102,816 | 99,739 | 1 |
Very poor indeed .
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The only thing good about this film is that it has a cool score by David Michael Frank . And that's it . The production design is terrible and some places ( like the Buena Venture Hotel ) seem thrown in for no reason other than to give the characters some place to be . Steven Seagal is not a good actor and in this film it seems as if he isn't even trying . His then-wife Kelly LeBrock is also totally unconvincing as just a Nurse . I don't know why Warner Brothers made this film . If they hired a professional writer to touch up the terrible script and hired a decent director it could have been much better . Even the action scenes are dull and simple . Honestly , I have never seen action handled so badly or carelessly . When people go to see an action movie they at least want the action to be cool . But not here it ain't . Say away from this . Rent " Under Siege 2 " instead .
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564,470 | 102,816 | 172,156 | 1 |
The most disgusting , xenophobic and irresponsible film I have ever seen !
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Give a five year old a movie camera and tell him to film playing cowboys and Indians with Tonka trucks and you have Bad Boys II , a disgrace that somehow took 8 years to reach fruition . It's probably the most racist , homophobic and degrading experience you'll ever see . I don't even think Michael Bay knew he was making such a movie which only adds to his incompetence . The basic logic of the movie is something like this , if you are a cop then it is okay to kill as many people as you want in the most brutal way possible ( inadvertently causing our ' heroes ' to become fascists , bigots and subliminally eviler than the main villain ) . There is also subtext , something along the lines of ; all ethnic minorities are either murderers , drug dealers or some kind of foul human being and all country-dwellers are inbred , racist Klan members . The movie spews hate in the faces of every audience member who has been misled into believing they are watching an action-comedy . Miami is a place with a very diverse ethnic population and I think it is completely irresponsible for the filmmakers to have behaved in this way . Maybe a five year old with a movie camera would have been too grown up to have allowed this . As you can tell by one of my older reviews , Bad Boys was hardly a unique or original movie but it worked because the style made up for the lack of intelligence and Mark Mancina's musical score was very strong . It gave every scene a beat , tied them together and sounded mighty cool . Well , that is gone ! Mancina's buddy Trevor Rabin took over scoring duties for this movie and the cool Bad Boys theme is completely gone and replaced with an endless and dull drone . In fact I would suggest that the score for this movie doesn't actually exist . And there are far too many unnecessary scenes of absolutely nothing that contribute in no way to the already clichéd plot ( drug dealers , oooohhhh that's not been done before ) . It proves that Bay was given far , far too much time and money to do whatever he wanted . The result ? A 2 . 5 hour mess of unremarkable car chases ( also highly original , you'd never expect an action movie to have a car chase would you ? ) , constant , unironic profanity and sexism . And can someone tell me how the slimy main villain seemed have constant stubble without ever growing a beard ? Several days pass by , he doesn't shave and he never grows a beard . The movie would have you believe that all Cubans are this way . A pretty bad representation methinks . Trust me it's not that way in real life . For all this movies attempts at hardcore action the mix with cartoonish violence comes off as incongruous . This is not a no-brainer . It's a racist pile of trash that can be labelled a no-brainer as a desperate last-minute excuse by Michael Bay . It took FIVE writers to come up with this . The fact that they or Michael Bay have been playing Grand Theft Auto : Vice City far too much is clearly evident . Almost every single part of this movie is stolen from some part of that game . From locations , to car , situations , characters and plots . And still it is no .
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564,090 | 102,816 | 85,750 | 2 |
The third dimension is awfulness
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Oh dear is this film bad ? Jaws is a classic , Jaws II is a strong , worthy sequel but this drek is just so pathetic . Though I must say it's nowhere near as bad as the notorious Jaws The Revenge . In the space of 5 years the Brody kids have gone from kids to total grown-ups . Dennis Quaid is Michael and he now works at Sea World ( one would imagine he would have a fear of the water by now ) in Florida . They've just opened up their Undersea Kingdom ( y'know those glass tunnels ) and ignorant park owner Calvin Bouchard ( Academy Award winner Louis Gosset Jnr . at the start of his downward spiral ) is so full of himself he doesn't even realise a massive Great White Shark has snuck into the lagoon and plans to munch on divers , swimmers , skiers etc . Luckily for them a renegade naturalist ( Simon MacCorkindale from TV's Casuality-looking EX-ACT-LEE like Thomas Jane ) is hanging around to convince everyone that getting in the water to torment / trap / catch the poor beast is the best idea . His fate is firmly sealed as soon as he opens his mouth . Which is a bit of rip-off considering he risks his life many times through-out the film and Calvin Bouchard jeopardises so many but escapes un-eaten . The shark coverage is down right terrible . The underwater photography sucks and is badly spliced with stock footage of sharks that look nothing like the clumsy foam rubber monster in the close-ups . The 3-D effects come off as the WORST you will ever see . Even in plain-old 2-D you can see that they were pretty much the most unimaginative and unsubtle attempts at reaching the audience ever . Even the 3-D tricks in Friday the 13th Part 3 were much more fun and natural than this . I first saw Jaws III on ITV years ago . It's best to see it on the new DVD as the 2 . 35 : 1 picture adds loads to the sides of the frame for those of you who suffered the pan and scan video . Plus there is a few extra gory shots that ITV and some video releases saw fit to censor . But the picture quality is real nasty with some dirty grainy scenes and annoyingly soft focus others . The sound is simple Dolby Stereo but don't expect any Oscar winning sound mixes this time . Even John Williams shark theme is all but vanished and some guy called Alan Parker's score is generic and unengaged . Extra feature ( s ) consist of a trailer ( methinks originally in 3-D shown before Friday the 13 Part 3 began , in the previous summer ) . And then there's something Universal call ' Recommendations ' . Click on it and what do you get ? Still photos of the DVD covers of the other Jaws movies . Duh , thanks ! The only interesting thing about this film is the fact that Sea World actually allowed their name and logo to be defamed in such a ludicrous way . Jaws may have been born into greatness but it died very , very quickly as a franchise . Now Jason Voorhees has lasted much , much , MUCH longer and the first Friday the 13th film was hardly a masterpiece . Never underestimate the underdog .
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564,836 | 102,816 | 120,768 | 2 |
Contrived , predictable nonsense
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BORING ! That's what I shouted aloud when the credits finally began to roll . My buddy fell asleep 3 times throughout this film and he even managed to stay awake throughout Sense and Sensibility . Don't get me wrong . I like intelligence in my action movies but this film was just so over-hyped and incoherent it was appalling . The story was contrived to the Nth degree and it had a very TV-movie feel to it . F . Gary Gray is not a good director at all and will never amount to anything more than pedestrian . I honestly don't know why people like this clichéd rubbish so much . Don't let the opinion of others influence decision of whether or not to watch this trash . But if you hate it , remember what I told you .
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564,787 | 102,816 | 349,903 | 2 |
Overlong , bigheaded , disjointed mess
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Ever seen a film with 86 endings ? No ? Well should the urge ever overcome you , Oceans's Twelve is the only film that refuses to just wrap up the ' plot ' for good . There are about a zillion climaxes that are all anti-climatic . Steven Soderbergh couldn't even get one of them right ? Andy Garcia comes back and demands that Ocean's 11 give him back the money they stole , plus extra . So they go off to Europe to steal things by not stealing them and not really planning anything at all . The whole film is made up of narcissistic filler . Ooooohh it's all so sophisticated and cool isn't it ? Puh-lease . This movie shouldn't have been made . Ocean's Eleven may have worked well but Twelve was taken from a non-related script called ' Honor Among Thieves ' and adapted into a sequel , that no one asked for . So how do you go about cramming in 12 main characters into a story that did not have 12 main characters ? You can't . As a result Ocean's 12 never interact all at once . Several characters are left with nothing to do , forgotten about , stand about like idiots , fight for even a couple of lines of dialogue ( all sarcastic , self-aware , notionally ' cool ' dialogue btw ) , disappear , reappear , wonder what the hell they're doing , forget who they are etc . . . It's just plain horrible and too convoluted and contrived for its own good . The whole film seems out of order and you are frequently left wondering what on earth is going on . This elitist , condescending attitude makes us feel like the movie was made for the cast instead of us . Plus Julia Roberts looks dreadful in this . She's very pale and thin and gaunt-looking . I thought I was looking at Skeletor to begin with . And if you don't believe how sickeningly ' clever ' the film thinks it is , a certain plot development has Julia Roberts play Tess Ocean playing Julia Roberts ( oh stop , that's too ingenious for my feeble , average movie-goer mind ) . Somehow Catherine Zeta Jones comes off a prettier , if not a better actress ( I do NOT like Catherine Zeta Jones-but she was an exception here when compared to the Plain Jane Julia Roberts ) as her accent is still all over the place . The only good bit about the film is Vincent Cassell in a small supporting role as a master thief ( like everyone else in the film ) . Funny how his one character is more interesting than a dozen others combined . Plus , we actually get to see him do stuff other than stand around . Which helps . Don't waste your time with this film . Life is too short and there are other , better , shorter movies than this out at the moment . Ocean's Twelve is a dirty dozen .
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564,650 | 102,816 | 348,121 | 2 |
Worst animated film I have EVER seen .
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To think I could have just rented Steamboy and got it over and done with . But it was only the UK Theatrical cut that was available to rent and with a Director's Cut available in a limited edition box set out there I had to be a snob and go buy that . What a complete waste of money . Steamboy is a steaming pile of crap ! The only thing I liked about it was the quaint depiction of olden-days English countryside . The rest was so phenomenally boring , that I was almost falling asleep . James Ray Steam ( voiced by Anna Paquin , sounding more like a Gaelic South-African than a boy from Manchester ) is the grandson of some good scientist and the son of some bad scientist . . . blah blah blah . . . steam power . . . blah blah blah . . . war machines . Christ almighty , I am sending myself into terminal coma even summarising this guff ! The cover makes it look like some sort of exciting superhero story . But all of the action happens in the last 10 minutes . Everything before this is so , so unbelievably slow . Every line of dialogue so flat . Every character bland as living hell . I wish to erase this film from my memory forever and I am extremely bitter over the 2 hours I WASTED watching it .
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563,946 | 102,816 | 810,872 | 2 |
Very poor , tacked together cash-in game .
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I am so disappointed with this Garfield game for many reasons . Let me begin by saying that the graphics are great and the music is very sweet . I have to say that my judgment is not all negative , but the gameplay is the worst in the history of all video-games ever . You think I'm exaggerating ? Basically , all you have to do is run around a generic level collecting things and occasionally discovering a secret room . Even something as novice as this could have been fun if the controls were not totally useless . It's a very difficult game to navigate through especially since the physics of touching baddies and dangerous objects just doesn't seem right . I finally just abandoned the game since there was obviously no point in taking it all the way to the end . I just wasn't enjoying it and I regret buying it . At least is was cheap . Graphics Sound B Gameplay F Lasting Appeal
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564,248 | 102,816 | 475,546 | 2 |
Horrible game of a horrible movie
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Cobra , the video game , was a side-scrolling shoot-em-up . That's if you managed to scroll more than 2 inches along the screen to find out before the game beat you . It was simply impossible . So many bad guys came at you at once and you were helpless do to anything about it . Even if you typed in those massive cheat programs ( ' Pokes'-remember them ? ) you still couldn't finish the game because the makers didn't program the Night Slasher ( the final baddie ) to die . So just fought him forever until you pulled the plug . The graphics were alright , the sound was alright , the gameplay was extremely poor and I am puzzled as to how Ocean were not sued by many a disgruntled gamer for unleashing such a poorly programmed travesty on the world . Even their choice of inspiration was dubious as Cobra was a pretty rotten film .
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563,970 | 102,816 | 465,894 | 2 |
Amateur indeed !
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This is quite possibly one of the most dullest pornos I have ever seen . The basic premise involves four girls and two guys in a living room ( with a video player and videos ! ) and then a bedroom doing a small amount of boring sexual acts . All four women are shaven ravers but the only attractive one of them all is Donna Ibbotson . Both she and Nichola Holt are the only 2 that do anal , but it's short and lackluster . They also both try DP but it lasts for about 2 seconds before one of or both guys get a case of the flopsies . What the main problem boils down is a case of too many girls and not enough guys and not a decent amount of space to accommodate them . The photography badly captures the action and it takes ages for anything good to happen . A little skill in the editing suite to cut out any boring bits would have been welcome and if the constant dullness doesn't annoy you then the girls laughing more than moaning will . One of the worst porn DVDs ever made .
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563,759 | 102,816 | 176,664 | 2 |
It may have been good in 1981 but it's just total crap now
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I remember playing this game only once on one of those table arcade machines with screen underneath the glass ( retro-arcade goers will remember what I am talking about , gibberish to anyone else ) in the totally abandoned passenger lounge in a totally deserted ferry on the way to the Isle of Skye in 1992 . Even a mere 11 years after it originally came out and with gaming technology passing from the C64 to the Sega / SNES this still seemed like crap . You play as Mario ( called Jumpman in his first appearance ) and your goal is to defeat Donkey Kong , a big monkey . In order to do this you must climb up ladders , ascending platforms and avoiding rolling barrels . It was very hard and not much fun . And even if your a serious retro-gamer you'll probably still find this one loosing its appeal after a few minutes . Graphics C Sound Gameplay D Lasting Appeal
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564,629 | 102,816 | 118,971 | 2 |
Very boring
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And very dull . This movie takes a criminal amount of time to get going and when it finally does it doesn't really go anywhere . Keanu plays a top lawyer called Kevin Lomax and we get a clichéd plot about a rich man killing his family and a couple of " TV Movie " sub-plots . But what we're supposed to be concentrating on is Keanu's descent into a conscience-free life and how he is giving up his morals just so he can win cases . Pretty melodramatic . There is ZERO humor in this movie . All movies need humor no matter what the tone . If not I just end up laughing AT it . Devil's Advocate is NOT scary . A couple of scenes may be intense but it isn't scary in the slightest . The only reason for watching this is Al Pacino's outlandish and eccentric performance , but you have to wait 2 hours to get to that . Give this a miss . I give it .
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563,903 | 102,816 | 105,616 | 2 |
Weak
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I can't believe that this got a theatrical release . The standard of animation is worse than direct-to-video and the ramshackle story is among the weakest and clichéd in this sub-sub-genre . Most of the Tom and Jerry shorts from the 1950's were made in " Cinemascope " widescreen but this wasn't . Did the makers learn anything from the past . Clearly not as the short cartoon quality is far superior to this 90's effort . The plot concerns the Cat and Mouse duo , who have been made homeless , helping a lost orphan escape from her evil aunt . These are all major clichés in kiddies cartoons . But guess what ? Tom and Jerry become friends , so there is no combat or action . It's just all infantile slush . If you really want to buy a cartoon movie for your kids or want to advise them on what to watch then direct them towards the new Scooby Doo movies and forget that this rubbish exists . After all , the people who made forgot what Tom and Jerry originally were .
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564,863 | 102,816 | 1,132,626 | 2 |
I wish I never saw
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Back in 2003 , 25-year-old director James Wan debuted his 10-minute short film Saw , winning enough acclaim and attention to produce and direct a feature film based on the concept of self mutilation for survival . The 2004 Saw was , in my old opinion , brilliant . Now I don't think so highly of it since the endless sequels have tarnished its reputation . Saw II was boring as hell and featured moronic characters that deserved to die . Saw III , which I believed was pushing its luck , wasn't any better . And now , 2 years later , and with Jigsaw himself long , long dead we have the fifth ( or should that be Vth ) , which takes ' pushing its luck ' to a whole new level . Despite being stone cold dead , Jigsaw's work is being carried on by a mental cop who could actually bore people to death instead by being such a crap character . The guy has one facial expression . Five people are trapped in a yadda yadda yadda . . . blood , dismemberment , CGI gore effects , blah , blah , blah . If I were in that giant trap I would have gotten free without a scratch since there are several big flaws . These movies have become a parody of themselves . Everything that we've seen in the previous four movies is all here . The icky atmosphere , the stock cop characters , the dull victims and the unshocking shock twist as the Saw theme tune builds up to a big finish . The plot tries to explain most of the questions we've been asking since the beginning , but still fails to make a whole load of sense . Just how the hell can dying Jigsaw , barely able to even get out of bed , manage to find the time to stalk his prey , set up ( and pay for ) all his traps without ever being caught ? Saw V tries to tell us he has been in league with our mental cop from the beginning but he is already as established killer when the first meet each other , so that ain't gonna work out . And what happened to Doctor Gordon ? I've been waiting four damn years to learn of Cary Elwes ' fate after the heavy bathroom door was slammed shut in Saw 1 ; a movie which cost only $1 . 2 million dollars to make and earned back $103 million back worldwide , before the million different DVD releases . Never one to turn their back on a cash cow , Lionsgate have cranked out one Saw film for every Halloween since 2004 . Saw VI is already planned for next year . They will be milking this ugly goat until doomsday . I fully expect to see Saw LIII in 2056 when I am 76 years old . Jigsaw will still be in it somehow , and it will also feature some convoluted method of tying in fifty-two previous sequels into one giant , idiotic plot . Don't let the tagline fool you or let you get your hopes up either . " You Won't Believe How It Ends . " I DO believe that it will never end . Now , gimme some Police Academy 5 : Assignment Miami Beach .
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564,813 | 102,816 | 34,554 | 2 |
Not funny
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This is surely the weakest Bugs Bunny cartoon I've ever seen . Beaky Buzzard simply is not funny and has no appeal at all . As a matter of fact he's down-right annoying . He's not a character I wish to see again in further Looney Tunes cartoons . This short has him preying after Bugs because Mama Buzzard wants him to go out and catch his first dinner . Bugs obviously doesn't take so well to this and doesn't make it easy for the bird . But where is the usual Bugs Bunny intelligence , outsmarting , battle of wits ? Not here I tell ya . Beaky Buzzard is not a formidable opponent for our fave rabbit and this cartoon is completely DOA . Avoid it .
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563,869 | 102,816 | 338,130 | 3 |
Utterly plot-less and only slightly entertaining
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I got this DVD well over 2 years ago and only decided to watch it yesterday . I don't know why it took me so long as I do like the Inspector Gadget show and even the new Gadget and the Gadgetinis . While it may have a bright color pallet and all the technical sophistication of a modern animated movie , there are some old things missing that bog this Gadget right down the toilet . First of all the classic Inspector Gadget theme song and music is completely absent . The composer tries to compromise by doing a score that sounds similar but it's still just no good enough . The Gadget-mobile is now a talking car , not a car that can turn into a van . Plus it looks a lot cuter and rounder instead of being plain cool . Penny no longer has her computer book and she and Brain hardly make an appearance at all . The plot is non-existent . There's something about a transformation formula and Doctor Claw using for some never revealed evil but that's all I got . What the deal was with the short / giant Italian guy I will never know . It had nothing to do with anything . And if the title is anything to go by , his last case is wrapped up in no way whatsoever . And he stays on the force so why it's called ' last case ' is a mystery also . I wasn't impressed at all . This is an affront to a great animated show that is strangely absent on DVD , but don't let that prompt you into buying whatever Inspector Gadget DVDs you can . I sold this mere seconds after finally watching it . No kid will like or appreciate this and no fan of the old show with tolerate it .
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564,272 | 102,816 | 330,373 | 3 |
One of the most boring films I have seen this year !
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I know I'm going to make loads of enemies by saying this but I just don't see why everyone is going nuts over this film . There are billions of biased Harry Potter lunatics out there who would give this film before even seeing it , even if the director did nothing but wipe his ass on the celluloid . That isn't the case , but it's still one of the most boring films I've had to sit through in a long time . The books do not translate well to film . I know it's an old cliché that people always say about books into movies but it really does appropriately describe the world of Harry Potter . The books may be money-spinners but JK Rowling's universe is so dense and involving one can become immersed rather easily , which is one of the franchises major selling points . The films were put into pre-production before Warner fully understood how long or drawn-out Rowling stories would be . As a result they are forced to increasingly cut down on what they put up on screen . I found Prisoner of Azkaban to be anorexic compared to it's literary counterpart . Goblet of Fire goes even further and strips it right down to the bone . Director Mike Newell had the option of releasing the film in 2 separate volumes ( ala Kill Bill ) but his overconfidence got the better of him and he reckoned he could do a 500 + page book in a 157-minute film ( with 12 of those minutes being credits ) . It doesn't work , I don't care what anyone says , the story is badly damaged by being whittled down to almost nothing . I'm not complaining at the lack of the Dursley's , I know they don't make or break the film . But important sub-plots and important characters are barely even featured . Harry's co-competitors in the Tri-Wizard Tournament , Viktor Krum and Fleur Delacour , are interesting and developed in the book . In this movie they are so absent you'd think they'd been completely cut out . I think I heard Krum speak once . And the British Tabloid press made a huge fuss ( as they do with everything ) over a girl from Fife being cast as Harry's would-be girlfriend Cho Chang . But she's in it for an absolute maximum of 2 minutes and has about 3 lines of dialogue ! And what of this nonsense that Ron and Hermione are in love with each other ? They have a single conversation in 157 minutes with no longing glances or butterflies in stomach or anything ! Being jealous at each other dancing partners simply isn't enough . Also , many important plot developments that the film doesn't have time to linger on are given a single line of explanation and quickly forgotten as things move from A to B to C . For anyone who hasn't read the book this could be very disorientating and you'll probably get lost at some point . Keen to distract us from this Warner have chucked in a massive SFX budget in hope that lots of CGI will make us think the film really is amazing when it just plain ain't . How superficial can you get ? I really don't think the kids will mind though . And the zombie parents dragged along with them won't care either . Those of us who are serious about films ( people who go nuts over Harry Potter not included ) will notice how plebeian the franchise has become . Mike Newell does chuck in a couple ( only a couple ) of nice shots but has this amateur theory that the darker the film looks the more sinister it will become . What nonsense ! Much of this film is so poorly lit you'll struggle to see what is happening on screen . And the daytime scenes are all shot with an ugly green haze to make things look enchanting or spooky or something . It makes the film look stupid . Order of the Pheonix is up next . And that book was very , very long . How on earth they will fit that in a movie I don't know . Warner have seriously bitten off more than they can chew with this franchise . In the hands of a skilled director who is familiar with action , fantasy and even a touch of horror this could have been better . The director of Mona Lisa Smile and Four Weddings and Funeral is a totally inappropriate choice . For some reason John Williams has jumped ship and left scoring to duties to Patrick Doyle . But you'll hardly notice the difference . Doyle retains the Harry Potter theme and sticks to the loud , bombastic sound Williams used for action scenes in the previous films . I'm not a Harry Potter hater , no matter how negative my opinion sounds . But trying to talk sense into someone who loves these films no matter what is like trying to convince a Christian Fundamentalist that God doesn't exist . A rather extreme simile , but alarmingly appropriate .
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564,033 | 102,816 | 337,978 | 3 |
Live PG-13 or Die Soft
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A Die Hard 4 was discussed and thrown around for years . There was a point when Tears of the Sun was supposed to be Die Hard 4 , with John McClane crashing a plane in the jungle and leading the survivors to safety through a war-zone . In my opinion , the series ended perfectly with the brilliant Die Hard With A Vengeance . After so many false starts it's been 12 years since we last saw John McClane . He was in his late 30s then , now he's in his early 50s . A lot has happened to Hollywood action films in that space of time . By that I mean they have lost their nerve and all of their edge . Too often our summer movies are nothing but PG-13 crap , designed for the kiddies . Die Hard has always been a hardcore action series , it is a slap in the face and an insult to fans that this unnecessary fourth instalment be aimed at an audience that was only 1-year old when the DHWAV was released and an audience that is STILL not old enough to see any of those movies in the first place . But asides from that , LFODH has it's own problems that not even an R-rating could fix . First of all . . . Len Wiseman ! Why the hell did Fox give this precious franchise to a man who has only directed two awful Underworld movies ? Did they learn nothing from AVP when they gave hack Paul Anderson control ? We all know what garbage that ended up being . Ironically surnamed Wiseman's style of direction just does NOT suit Die Hard . Gone is the naturalised look of McTiernan and even Harlin . In it's place is a horrid low brightness / high contrast look that has been popular in this post-Michael Bay world . It makes the action and locations quite blurred and incoherent and it sticks out like a sore thumb compared to the other movies . And what's with that silly font in the opening credits ? DH2 and DHWAV didn't even have opening credits . McClane , still a NYPD Detective , despite the ending of DHWAV ( hints at alcoholism and being a suspect in the Federal Reserve raid ) is sent to pick up computer wiz-kid Matt Farrell ( Justin Long , who doesn't appear to be ageing ) to help the NSA figure out why computer networks across the country are malfunctioning . Right away nameless baddies are onto them but McClane offs them no sweat . But not all of them , he foolishly leaves the main henchmen alive for some reason ( to make more movie ) . It turns out that shockingly unscary ' terrorist ' Thomas Gabriel ( Timothy Elephant ) is behind the computer villainery and is out for revenge against the government for firing him after all the hard work he put in for them ( just like Travis Dane in Under Siege 2 ) . He's got the brains and the manpower to take the entire US network in to his vice-like grip and send the country back to the stone age . No one can find him since all of his equipment is packed onto a large moving vehicle to keep the signal's transparent and untraceable ( just like Travis Dane in Under Siege 2 ) . Oh God . . . why did they not get someone else to play this character ? Timothy Elephant clearly has no clue how to play a baddie . His idea of sounding threatening is to to move his lips around while talking but never actually opening his mouth . Ooooh . . . gee don't hurt me ! And why Kevin Smith ? This really was a step too far . This man doesn't belong in a Die Hard film , plain and simple . All this was was a wink at the audience and another excuse for him to plug Star Wars for the 86 millionth time . Wrong , just wrong ! The action scenes are mildly entertaining , but they are shot and cut with the usual post-Michael Bay confusion . You never really feel like your part of it or feel McClane's danger . And I am sick of Willis and Co . promoting this are ' old-school ' with ' real stunts ' . You can clearly tell that the majority of it is still crappy CGI . And the cop car / helicopter explosion is just too far-fetched , regardless of how much you can suspend your disbelief . Did a five-year-old write this ? That kind of stunt may work fine when you're playing with your Matchbox cars but not in a Die Hard movie . The lack of swearing didn't bother me too much . You can tell that they did have a lot of cussing in the original cut but were forced to loop some ADR over the top of it after studio pressure . This clearly means that there will be uncut DVD with some perverse title like ' The YipeeKayay Unrated Edition with hardcore footage THEY wouldn't let you see in cinemas ' . Marco Beltrami's score is also a total letdown . After his autopilot hack-job of Terminator 3 , why did they let him have control of someone else's themes ? The late Michael Kamen did some great stuff on the Die Hard movies but Beltrami only uses his fourth most reoccurring cue and ditches the rest , save for a cue from Die Hard 2 . To me , Die Hard finished in 1995 . This film , which was only made to spark some life into a flopping career , is just a tame action film starring Bruce Willis . It's not Die Hard . This one definitely will NOT ' blow you through the back wall of the theatre ' . Oh . . . and Mr . Writer , if you paid any attention to the other movies you'd know that McClane's son is called John Jnr , not Jack . It seems like you don't know Jack actually .
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564,424 | 102,816 | 120,786 | 3 |
So boring I forgot that it even existed
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The Patriot ( nothing to do with the Mel Gibson film of the same name ) came out Steven Seagal was still doing that ' saving the environment ' thing in his movies . Which is fine . But it doesn't make for good action . When the plot ( ? ) of this film finally kicked in I saw the twist ( ? ) coming a mile off . Seagal's anti-warfare , care-for-mother-nature stance is not very subtle . For a film that was originally going to debut in the cinemas it is shot very much like a TV movie despite some wonderful shots of the country by Dean Semler , the photographer of Dances with Wolves . Steven Seagal does like 1 fight scene in the entire film and it's totally boring . As an action film it fails , as a drama it stinks , as an environmental message it's obvious . Avoid like Ebola crossed with plague .
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564,002 | 102,816 | 472,167 | 3 |
Boring
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If you suffer from insomnia then Radiant would be the best way to send you into a 7-year coma . The film is so preposterously overwrought and mundane that it's hard to imagine that director Steve Mahone could overlook such obvious dullness . The story has an exiled Doctor ( who we never get to see ) move out into the desert to create a vaccine that will cure all diseases by filling the hosts full of antibodies that can combat any infection ( yes , just like that episode of Futurama ) . The vaccines don't work and the human guinea pigs become infected with a virus that kills within 48 hours . Not wanting to be caught by the Government guys in masks the group head into the desert for cover , hoping that the sunshine will kill the virus . All of this is narrated by Michael , the only one of the quartet immune to the infection . And it's the most boring narration ever . They could have cast someone with an interesting voice but instead we get someone with less vocal personality than Clive Owen . On top of this the editor insists on fade-cutting more than half the movie , giving it a weird dream-like feel and increasing the audiences desire to go to sleep . It's no surprise that half of the audience walked out of this , I was not one of them for some reason . But I bloody well should have . The ending is supposed to be shocking and clever and foreboding . But it's plain and simply not . A relief yes , but not dramatic in the slightest . The utter cheapness of this production and muffled sound that renders a lot of the dialogue unintelligible cripples what could have been an interesting sci-fi story if it had better actors , cooler locations and a sense of urgency . As it is , Radiant is a snoozefest .
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564,778 | 102,816 | 363,140 | 3 |
Very , very dull
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This really doesn't match up to Castle of Cagliostro . Lupin isn't as funny or wacky or as hyperactive . The scenery and music are uninspired and plot just isn't interesting . The only good thing about this ' un is the nudity ( only in the uncut version ) provided by Fujiko . It helped spice up some of the tedious scenes . CoC had a formidable villain and set up the movie for some imaginative set-pieces . The locations in TSoTG are not very vivid or engaging . Zenigata , Goemon and Jigen don't even provide decent sideshow entertainment this time . It's like they were just filling a contractual obligation by appearing . The DVD is in full-frame with Dolby Stereo sound . It has a decent amount of extras , including quite a few trailers . But one curious thing . There is no chapter selection on the disc or timecode displayed on the player once inserted . Though you can still skip to the next scene number using the remote .
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564,722 | 102,816 | 120,755 | 3 |
A movie for idiots .
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Many people criticized this movie for having no plot . Which is a result of many people criticizing the first for being too complex . There's just no pleasing some people but this movie could have made up for it by having some class or a formidable villain . Dougray Scott is pretty much one of the worst villains ever and a poor representation of Scottish actors . John Woo uses some wonderful Australian scenery but fails to inject any sense of excitement to the fight scenes . The gun battles look too damn staged and the fist fights are all done in slow-motion , which robs them of any realism or hardcore . Seeing as how this is a PG-13 the action is also pretty damn tame . Which is a shame since Woo is a pro at this . You hardly see any bullets even enter bad guys never mind exit . It's all done off screen . If people wanted tame violence why on earth did they hire Woo to direct ? It's a bit puzzling . Although it IS tame it is still darker and harder than the original . But the duff biochemical warfare plot is pure video game crap . I can't believe Robert Towne had a hand in writing this . It's like a rejected plot to a Solid Snake PS1 game . There's seems to be some focus on making it a James Bond / Die Hard wannabe instead of respecting the source material and offering us any iconic or memorable set-pieces . Another major thing that is wrong with this movie however is Zimmer's score . For a movie that is 124 minutes long we get about 30 minutes of music . Zimmer is known for his talent of creating ambient and versatile music . But NONE of that is present in MI-2 . This was movie was made around the time of his decline into mass-produced soulless stuff . Which is a shame . It's the wrong plot , the wrong director and the wrong approach that turns this into a movie for idiots . They really under-estimated the audience and fumbled the ball with this one .
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564,458 | 102,816 | 449,010 | 3 |
Hopeless trash
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I got all of the Star Wars , Lord of the Rings , Harry Potter and Dungeons and Dragons movies and rudely mashed them together after individually raping them in every orifice then you would get something that resembles Eragon ( even the title is a rip-off of Aragorn from LOTR ) , a film so hopelessly incompetent that even something as basic as lip-syncing is off in almost every scene . Edward Speelers plays the personality-free title character . A young farm boy who is actually the only hope for a bunch of rebels . . . taken over the land of Alagesia . . . the chosen one . . . evil king . . . sorcerers , elves , orks , dwarfs . . . blah blah blah . God , I'm boring myself to tears . Speelers has about as much charisma as a lump of dung . And his forced , well-spoken English really got on my nerves . As much as some of the CGI was nice to look at , it just lacks the fantastical element that films such as Dragonslayer delivered so strongly . And the look and feel of the environments was utterly without any sense of atmosphere . And on top of that , there wasn't really anything happening in the film . A brief , unexciting battle scene at the end is the only action you will see in this movie . The rest of the 105 minute running time is just people riding horses . You think I am kidding ? John Malkovich ( who , by the looks of things , did a single days work ) is wasted as the moronically named Galbatroxix or is it Galbathrax or Ozorganax or . . . something . The evil King ! The King who is evil because he . . . just is . He sits in a dark chamber all day . Christ , how more evil than that can you possibly get . Jeremy Irons is the only good thing in it but he really is slumming it here . As is Rachel Weisz and Robert Carlisle as some sort of trans-sexual zombie wizard . None of them look like they are happy . It's a complete waste of time . Don't be fooled by the colorful posters and TV spots . It's a really terrible film indeed !
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564,806 | 102,816 | 99,052 | 3 |
All over way to quick
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This film ends before anything happens and really doesn't have much going on in it . The whole film seems to be too contrived and way too many events are foreshadowed in a very obvious way . I mean when Jeff Daniels is in his basement and he finds all of the rotten wood with his nail gun . Okay ? rotten wood that will have significance perhaps and the nail gun ? a last ditch weapon against the spiders ? How unsubtle ! The spiders themselves are not very scary as they are practically non-existent thru out the whole film . There are a couple here and there who bite a couple of people who then die . But nothing of interest . Julian Sands ' character is useless and serves no purpose other than to go into a barn he knows is crawling with killer spiders and get bitten himself . What an idiot ! Why ? John Goodman is barely recognisable under a stupid helmet and his dialogue is barely intelligible . The townspeople are clichéd and stereotyped . I mean come on ! They refer to Jeff Daniels as " big city folks " . Way too much time is devoted to Jeff Daniels trying to build a reputation as a doctor and dealing with the Sheriff ( who is a moron , would you believe ) and a rival old Doctor and not enough give to kicking of eight-legged ass . We only see about 3 spiders actually get killed . The rest are , conveniently , done off-screen . People tend to refer to this film as a thrillomedy . No ! It's just dull and uneventful . 104 minutes of absolutely nothing . It's also made in 1 . 85 : 1 , which is never a good thing . Check out William Shatner's Kingdom of the Spiders . That is much better .
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564,323 | 102,816 | 120,633 | 3 |
What the hell is going on in this movie ?
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Courtroom dramas are so out of date . Which is why this sub-genre is confined mostly to rubbishy TV-movies these days . In A Civil Action there was just too much legal jargon for me to understand . If find that most audiences feel a bit alienated by technical gobbledygook . The comedy wasn't really funny and seemed out of place . Most characters just seemed to be nameless . There were just too many to remember and they weren't really all that interesting to begin with . The film also had very little drama . It was quite a labor to get through this guff . I think it was never really intended to be more than a potboiler . Catch it on TV if you're that desperate . It's where it belongs .
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564,676 | 102,816 | 262,734 | 3 |
If you have the PC-version of the original , don't bother
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Jailbreak is an embarrassment to the Road Rash franchise . It's so weak and pointless and the gameplay is unbelievably crap . Everything that makes Road Rash great has been whittled down to nothing that I ended up wondering why they bothered . 1 . You cannot fall off your bike and run around . If you smash into your car you just go right through it . Falling off only happens ( rather unspectacularly ) when you're energy hits zero . But you magically reappear on the bike in a second . 2 . There are only 4 rashers per race . In previous games there were 15 . It doesn't really feel like a race anymore and there are 11 less people to beat-up . 3 . Marshall Lee only chases you . He will not go after any other rashers . 4 . There are very few / no opportunities for stunts / jumps . 5 . The sound effects are rotten . 6 . There is no rear-view mirror or indicators telling you who is behind . 7 . There is no counter telling you how far you've come in the racecourse . There is also a new feature here in which you can play Marshall Lee on his police bike . The aim is to knock the rashers off their bikes before they reach the finish line . But where is the fun in this ? If you're going faster you have to slow down to their speed and painstakingly attack them while maintaining slowness . This is not what Road Rash is about ! Mix this in with some horrible graphics and you have a total stinker of a game . A huge disappointment indeed . Graphics Sound Gameplay - Lasting Appeal
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564,544 | 102,816 | 212,985 | 3 |
Rubbish until the end
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Oh Boy was I disappointed with this pile of crud . Ridley Scott has never made a 1 . 85 : 1 movie in his life but , for some reason , he made this his first . I thought that Manhunter had very cool widescreen photography and Jonathan Demme really should have followed in its footsteps . I thought I could depend on Scott to give us photography as good as he given us before ( Legend , Thelma and Louise ) . But NO ! I have to get that MAJOR gripe out of the way first . But I have some other gripes . Mainly that the film is incredibly boring and has no redeeming qualities whatsoever . Hopkins was cool and creepy in SOTL but here he is just campy and hammy . Did he deliberately try to turn Hannibal Lector into a gay icon ? SOTL received 4 Academy Awards but Hannibal deserves a truckload of Razzies . There are countless , scenes after scenes , of Clarice watching tapes of surveillance cameras and some Italian cop pacing about a rainy and miserable Florence . Ray Liotta pops up occasionally playing a role that was played by someone else in SOTL . He doesn't do much and contributes ZERO to the story . It seems that the only reason his character was in the movie was for the GROSS , GROSS , INCREDIBLY , GROSS ending . The ending is worth the price of admission but it is not worth sitting thru 2 hours of trash to see . It's a real shame that Manhunter and Silence of the Lambs were concluded with this total pile of garbage . Don't see it , don't rent it , don't buy the DVD and do not watch it on the TV .
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564,340 | 102,816 | 358,294 | 3 |
Ain't got a Scooby
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Some spoilers btw . This DVD has a major flaw . More than half the film's dialogue is in Japanese and the DVD does not have subtitles automatically burned into the screen . You have to turn them on , thus subtitling the English dialogue too . Of course , I only figured this out after watching the whole film and not understanding a single thing about it . Still , no subtitles can explain the utterly pointless opening scene that contributes nothing to the rest of the film or what purpose the FBI ' sidekick ' character Sean ( Matthew Davis ) served or why he was killed for finding a severed pinkie which the bad guy clearly did not want as he chucked it in a bucket right away . Why was Seagal's girlfriend killed ? What was the point in killing them if it didn't even motivate Seagal into actually doing something other than going from place to place asking questions , and getting answers , in Japanese . What was the main story ? Who was that lady following Seagal around ? My god , it's such a poorly written and poorly told story I can hardly believe it . I have liked none of Seagal's non-American movies of late . The Foriegner was one of the worst film's have ever seen . But this film does have strong production values , a more mainstream production team and a slightly cool final scene with bad guys getting chopped up and stuff but I still wouldn't recommend renting it , especially since the DVD is messed up and it's nowhere near as good as his older movies like Out for Justice or Under Siege 2 . The DVD is in 1 . 85 : 1 anamorphic widescreen with Dolby 5 . 1 sound and some pretty heavy punches during the fight scenes . Note to non-cockneys . Scooby = Scooby Doo = Clue
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564,161 | 102,816 | 60,838 | 3 |
Pretty weak cartoon
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In this short , the Pink Panther is just relaxing in his house when a mouse appears from his hole in the wall and helps himself to the fridge . A call to the exterminator ( one of the cartoon's few laughs ) proves to be fruitless as does any futile pursuit of the rodents . Many unfunny things follow until Pinky discovers a convenient book in his library called ' How to catch Mice ' . It instructs him to dress up as a cat ( even though Panthers are cats ) to scare them away . It works , but he is then chased by dogs . Not really that funny and rather misjudged as we've seen ' cat and mouse ' action a hundred times before with Tom and Jerry .
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564,194 | 102,816 | 115,891 | 3 |
Can anyone say ' Groundhog Day ' ?
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The makers of this film could not have seriously thought that they were making an original film . They MUST have known that they were ripping off " Groundhog Day " . They must have . Having said that the film itself is alright . But a little annoying . The kid is okay enough . He's not as irritating as most kids in movies but he does go thru some clichéd " teenage " moments involving girls that was kind of cringe-worthy to watch . Also there was no reason why he fell at the bottom of the stairs every morning . Why did that happen exactly ? This is an acceptable movie to watch on Xmas Eve or around the holiday season . So if a network is showing it then watching it will not be a bad thing .
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564,750 | 102,816 | 432,348 | 3 |
A horribly rushed , pointless cash-in .
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' Oh yes , there will be blood . ' Well about a tea-cup's worth if you're lucky . ' There will be boredom ' would be a more appropriate tagline for this absolutely worthless , mess of a sequel . After the surprisingly great and successful original , Lion's Gate immediately green-lighted this movie for production and completion within less than a year . Exactly how good can a film be with such a short production schedule ? The answer is not very good at all . In fact it's downright awful . Our Jigsaw killer has returned to teach ironic lessons to those who live dull lives yet are not truly alive . Only this time he attracts the attention of Donnie Wahlberg's half-crazed cop ( oh wait , he did that last time as well ) who is so thoroughly incompetent at his job that you'll want to jump into the movie and throttle him . Jigsaw has locked a bunch of strangers in a spooky old house with nerve gas slowly killing them . He gives them loads of clues on how to escape but since they are all idiots , none of them work together and their utter stupidity only serves to force the lumbering plot along and lead to their well deserved deaths . It's not just the bad script that kills the film , after all great filmmakers can make brilliance out of a rotten screenplay . It's the very poor editing , cinematography , pacing and characters that cripple the film beyond repair . Nobody director Darren Lynn Bousman isn't exactly Uwe Boll , but his lack of experience behind the camera gives this entire film an amateurish , hack feel . And don't get me started on how terrible the character's are . Wahlberg plays a clichéd stereotype right out of a bad , 80s , bottom shelf Cop video and the people stuck in the poisonous house are just morons . The first Saw worked so well because we only had 2 victims who conversed and worked with / against each other for the whole film . We had a stronger attachment to them . And they looked for logical ways out before resorting to painful . This time we get loads more victims with little explanation on who they are or what importance they have and they just never use their common sense . Another thing that bogs this sequel down even more is its total reliance on condescending to the audience . Any average movie goer could figure the best way out of most of the booby-traps and death scenarios but these stupid characters just do the dumbest thing so they can get killed and so film offers up another corpse for us to scream at . But not even this works . Some guy climbs into a big oven ( only a retard would do this in a horror film ) and is burned alive . But we don't even see anything ! And when he tries to pull himself out , not only is he not even burnt , but he just dies for no apparent reason . So his feet got burnt a bit , big deal ! If their were no swearing in this film , it would be a PG-13 all the way . Don't expect any of the bone-chilling scares you got first time around . The only thing that stops Saw II from being a complete failure is the interesting , if incredibly stupid , plot twist . But is it worth suffering 90 minutes for ? I would only recommend this film if you expect it to be crap , have lowered your expectations extremely far and obviously if you have the time and money to waste on it . Overall this is a disgrace to the original . Oh and said Saw only appears for about a second and half .
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564,403 | 102,816 | 488,776 | 3 |
Snoozathon
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RoboCop 3 was a crap film and this game is just as dull and an even bigger waste of time . At this point in the 90s video games of movies ( particularly platformers ) were either brilliant or downright terrible . However , it was mostly the latter and RoboCop 3 is no exception . The man in the can goes about his mission of shooting generic bad guys in windows ( man in shirt with gun ! ) or thugs on bikes as he walks from the left side of the screen to the right . The levels are unimaginative and bland with occasionally bizarre design ( yeah , there are often moving platforms on city streets ! ) . The sound effects are poor and the music is mass-produced rubbish . There is a tiny , tiny bit of variety in the different weapons Robo can use but when the gameplay is so boring why would you even waste your time ? Graphics Sound D Gameplay D Lasting Appeal
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564,157 | 102,816 | 414,982 | 3 |
This franchise is dead , as I predicted . How ironic !
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' Anticipation of dead is worse than death itself . ' These are the immortal words of Steven Seagal in Hard to Kill . Had he seen any of the movies in this franchise I'm sure he would have changed it to ' Final Destination is worse than death itself . ' A babe ( the very cute Mary Elizabeth Winstead ) predicts a roller-coaster will crash send many stereotyped , stock-teenage characters to their early / deserved death . She flips and demands to be let off , taking a few others with her . She was right , the train comes off the tracks and everyone dies . Only we don't even see it ! The survivors start dying in freak accidents , the secrets of their deaths revealed in their last photographs taken by stock-babe at the carnival before the accident . Thus , starts a plot we've seen twice before as babe and stock-sympathetic ' hunk ' go around all the other survivors trying to convince them to stay safe or something . But , as usual , they are complete idiots and don't listen and soon enough their brain matters have painted the ceilings , walls and floors after some overly-contrived death set-up . Yawn ! I'll be open right away and tell you that I thought that the first Final Destination was horrendous . It came out in a time where teen horror films starring actors well into their twenties were in high abundance and watching ' teenagers ' die one by one was cool again . This may sound hypocritical by a ' Friday the 13TH ' fan but Final Destination's morbid fascination with brutally killing people is a little unsettling . I'm not sure if we're supposed to laugh or scream at this stuff . And despite using the word ' brutal ' we don't really see that much . It's the method of death rather than the mess of it . The second film was a bit better , but hardly brilliance . I'll attribute that to David R . Ellis who is a better director than James Wong , who returns for this movie . Along with The One ( another rotten film ) he's proving himself to be a bit of a hack incapable of directing anything other than brain-dead eye-candy . He does shoot this film in widescreen , which gives it a bigger scope over the other two ( I found the bland and flat photography of the first film to be one of the worst things about it ) but he still doesn't fill it with anything interesting or even the slightest bit of atmosphere . Hardly impressive for a film about death himself . I hope this is the end of the line and Final Destination has reached its final destination . Any more entries in this series can only be outright robbery . Dick Turpin at least wore a mask ! As more of these films come out , the more I am reminded of Police Academy . We keep paying our hard earned pennies for this guff but all New Line are really doing is changing the poster and reserving the bore they did before . Well not anymore ! This goat has been milked dry . The dead horse cannot be flogged any further . Money cannot be made from this old rope . This franchise is DEAD !
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563,931 | 102,816 | 117,705 | 3 |
Big Macs for life
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How any critic can call Looney Tunes : Back in Action an exercise in franchise promotion but not puke at the 80-minute commercial that is Space Jam is beyond me . Our plot has Danny Devito play the voice of an evil , monster type businessman who's theme park is failing . In desperation he sends 5 little creatures to capture the Looney Tunes and bring them back as the new attraction . So . . . where is Looney Tune land ? Apparently it's underground . And digging up any golf ball hole will eventually lead to it . When the Looney Tunes challenge the would-be kidnappers to a basketball game they kidnap Michael Jordan to be on their team . The quality of the film nosedives from here on . Jordan's acting is so wooden it's mahogany . He expresses no confusion , joy or surprise at being yanked into Looney Tune land and confronted by all the toons . ' Bugs Bunny you're a cartoon you're not real ' , he says in the most flat , boring and dullest way ( missing commas intended as he doesn't use them ) . And then the big game follows . Once it's over , and there's no reason left to continue watching , the film goes on for another 10 minutes ( to beef the running time up ' feature length ' ) with the basketball / Jordan story . It's rubbish . It's no surprise that the film is directed by Joe Pytka ( he's NOT Joe Dante that's for sure ) , a man who has never done any other features but over a 1000 TV ads , or something . Space Jam is nowt but 100 % proof Warner whored out their most famous creation to make a few quick , and cheap , bucks . It's heartbreaking , heinous stuff . Casting Michael Jordan alongside the Looney Tunes is not inspired and imaginative . It's crass and desperate . Now they can attract sports fans AND kiddies . And Michael Jordan of all people ! He's not a good actor and his fame outside of the U . S . is minimal to say the least . Moreso today . The only part of the film that comes ( very , very remotely ) close to the true spirit of the Looney Tunes is the score . James Newton Howard ( a truly bizarre choice , how about Jerry Goldsmith , Bruce Broughton or even Danny Elfman ) recognizes the classic Looney Tunes themes and uses them appropriately in certain moments but the rest of the score is generic and uninspired . Back in Action was intelligent , witty and satirical . Space Jam is corny , cheap and classless . It's an absolute travesty . How can we honestly take seriously a movie that has every cast member awe at Michael Jordan , has not too subtle product placement for McDonalds and has the Looney Tunes ( one of the most ingenious creations in history ) exploited in the most shameless and guilt free manner . With Space Jam , Warner showed that they'd cash in the Looney Tunes at a pawn shop for $5 if they could . A total lack of respect for Chuck Jones , Friz Freleng and Robert McKimson . And they don't even act Looney . The only laughs come from Bugs and Daffy . And it's sporadic and inconsistent . Producer Ivan Reitman ( who has no experience and no business with this franchise ) managed to convince Bill Murray to appear in this drek ( for about 10 minutes ) so the trailer could boast an ACTUAL star other than Jordan . Murray's performance is the bare minimum and has a let's-get-this-over-with feel ( though Murray working below-par is still miles ahead of many other actors at the top of their game ) . His appearance in the film is massively oversold . It's just not fair that THIS is a big hit while Back In Action flopped horribly . I consider it the biggest miscarriage in justice ever . I still blame the marketing for Back in Action . It was bad , REAL bad . But still has some sort of quiet dignity about it when compared to the McDonalds promoted , in your face junk that was Space Jam's marketing . Is it any wonder Joe Dante had Back In Action nicknamed ' The Anti-Space Jam movie ' ? And just what the hell is a Space Jam anyway ? It's not even set in Space ! ! ! It took Warner 3 tries but the finally released the movie in its original aspect ratio . The DVD presents the film is 1 . 78 : 1 anamorphic widescreen with pretty active Dolby 5 . 1 sound . There are loads of features but they are all fluff . Some 80's Looney Tunes shorts are included too .
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564,121 | 102,816 | 476,964 | 3 |
Boring feminist rubbish
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It's been said a dozen times already , but The Brave One is basically Death Wish all over again with just hint of Taxi Driver . It is also incredibly boring with lifeless characters and some horribly misjudged moments . Erica Bane ( Jodie Foster ) is a radio host who is mugged in Central Park ( in a totally unshocking scene ) . Her boyfriend is killed and she is badly beaten . The police don't care about her case and she figures that the only way to feel safe on the streets again is to buy a gun , just in case . What a happy coincidence then that Erica meets plenty of baddies after purchasing her new weapon . It gives her the opportunity to have some fun killing people and gives the movie and excuse to exist . It might have been involving had I not felt so utterly detached from the character . Neil Jordan does something wrong , I'm not sure what it is , but he seems to keep us at a distance from Erica Bane from the very beginning . She just doesn't seem like a real , believable person and his handling of her important , emotional scenes come across as flat and cursory . It also doesn't help that the plot is most convoluted and contrived nonense with far , far too many coincidences . How dumb do they think we are , exactly ? It also disturbingly portrays most ethnic minorities as being a threat . If the baddies aren't black or Latino then they are sleazy middle-aged men . Either way , they are male and you be ashamed to be one since Jodie Foster , in her producer capacity , seems to think that we are all potential rapists . Why she felt like she needed to make this statement I don't know . And besides , why should a woman have to go through such an ordeal before she realises that she can be tough ? Why can't she just be tough in the first place ? I think that Jodie Foster , blinded by her feminist arrogance , forgot to consider that THIS might be interpreted as sexist . The main reason for The Brave One ( terrible title ) failing is that Neil Jordan never gets a single camera angle right . At no point in the film do we really feel like we're in Erica's man-hating shoes . His photography and color-schemes are bland and muted instead of being naturalised and realistic , which would have been much more involving . And NYC has been seriously cleaned up since the mid-90s , the film even makes a point of mentioning this . So why then go on to show that it is still crawling with vermin ? Is it or isn't it ' The Safest Big City in the World ' ? I don't think that there is any logic to this at all . Basically , it's a TV movie masquerading as a film that belongs on the big screen . If you find TV movies boring then , chances are , you'll find this unbearable .
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564,834 | 102,816 | 117,500 | 3 |
Michael Bay does himself no favours
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After massively misjudging the scale of Pearl Harbor and reducing it to no more than a video-game recital of a very important historical event , he will have to work extremely hard to win back the tiny shred of credibility he started out with . Following up that garbage with the even worse Bad Boys II wasn't a wise move . The Rock has characters with just a touch more depth . It's not necessarily a big story but he seems to stretch it out over two hours with heinously over-cut action scenes and extraneous sub-plotting . General Francis Xavier Hummel ( Ed Harris ) takes over Alcatraz with some poisonous gas rockets and aims them at San Francisco with the intention of vaporising everyone unless the families of each member of his dead team - what team ? - is paid $1 , 000 , 000 . I mean , if he is prepared to do that then why not just sell them to some militia , or freedom fighter group ? A nerdy and heavily bored FBI agent , named Stanley Goodspeed ( Nicolas Cage ) , is called to San Francisco from Washington to observe and instruct the inevitable SEAL operation to overthrow the Marines on Alcatraz . But wait , there's more . Alcatraz is a maze of twisted metal and broken walls . They won't stand a chance without someone who has knowledge of how to break out . Or break in . And so enters the philosophising and lanky-haired John Patrick Mason ( Sean Connery ) at about 45 minutes into the movie . He's been in jail for 30 years and doesn't have an extreme reaction at having to work for the very people who have held him without trial for so long . There is an utterly pointless and indulgent car chase before he actually gets down to business . And it's a car chase in San Francisco , so you know what that means . Once on the island , the SEALS , as predicted , are crap and get killed instantly . So , basically , Hummel wants to honour his fallen comrades by killing more American soldiers . How absurd . Plus these SEALS have thoroughly extensive training and , in real life , there is NO WAY they'd end up being so useless . Goodspeed and Mason are not a great pairing . Cage cannot make Goodspeed likable no matter how skilled an actor he may be . He's a complete coward . Annoying . Unfunny . The words he says don't sound right coming from his mouth . When he tries to be tough , he just seems ridiculous . Mason is just an old James Bond . Hell , he's even a British Secret Agent . The role was written with Connery in mind , so don't expect anything but his elite brand of OAP smart-ass cool . They involve themselves in a variety of set-pieces before being captured by Hummel , who's mission is not going well . The FBI doesn't want to cough up the money and would rather flatten Alcatraz and its 81 civilian hostages than part company with a few million dollars . Nice . This subplot is , of course , used to generate tension and excitement and to goose up the already overstuffed turkey that is the plot . Coherent editing is not this movie's strength . In fact , coherence is hardly something one would associate with The Rock . There are so many distractions and superfluous plot points that the only way Bay can compensate is to turn every scene into an MTV blur . The target audience is familiar with this kind of film-making anyway , which results in The Rock becoming a huge , clumsy , oafish movie , with little in the way of sense or reality . There are a few entertaining aspects though . Hans Zimmer's score is truly um . . . rocking . The supporting cast is interesting and delivers far more tolerable performances than Cage or Connery . Some of the Alcatraz sets are nice to look at , as well . But , if this is the best thing one can say about an action movie , then one needs to consider something else . Released in the June , 1996 , The Rock is inferior and less engaging than a similar movie released the month before . Executive Decision attempts the same theme and an identical form of tension . In 135 minutes , it wastes no time on sub-plotting , develops far more likable characters and is way more exciting . Exec Dec is played straight . The Rock is played to look cool and hip . It's not . Oh and if Mason is supposed to have a major beef with Womack then perhaps they should have cast someone older than John Spencer who would have been - years-old when his character first crossed Mason .
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564,602 | 102,816 | 220,506 | 3 |
Waste of time !
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Even though most of them are rubbish , the Halloween movies always seem so full of potential when the lights go down and the film fades in to that ominous and slicker-than-crude-oil theme tune . Sadly though , they never attempt anything other than stabbings . John Carpenter's original low-budget horror flick , about a babysitter stalked by the bogey man , was a big hit that brought him much acclaim . A sequel was inevitable . Carpenter even worked on it . But after that , he bowed out and his producer Moustapha Akkad took over . He's not a filmmaker , he's a businessman . And for 24 years , he has served us the same sandwich , over and over . Rick Rosenthal , who directed Halloween II , is back behind the camera . One would assume that his familiarity with the franchise is a good thing . Too bad he's obsessed with cheesy lighting , obnoxiously loud sound effects and confusing editing . This film was supposed to be released in the autumn of 2001 , but apparently there were major differences of opinion when the director of H20 , Steve Miner , started fiddling with the finished print . The original title , Halloween : The Homecoming , was dropped because Dimension Films wanted a title that made it clear that Michael Myers was still alive . So they nicked half the title off an Alien movie and stuck it on . There is only one way to tell a story of teenagers being murdered by a psycho in a William Shatner mask / hockey mask / pillow case . And you've seen it a zillion times . The only minuscule difference this one offers is that the whole thing in broadcast on the Internet , which provides room for some gimmicky , if annoying , set pieces and a few clever tricks . But don't expect jaw-dropping twists , or intensity . An ambitious reality show producer ( Busta Rhymes ) sets up the Myers house with booby-traps and red herrings to juice his sleepover Internet show . A handful of teens , with stereotypical personalities , fall for it and deliver the goods . Until Mikey comes back , that is . What's that you say ? Surely , Mikey can't be alive after Jamie Lee lopped his head off in H20 ? Well , the movie says that Michael stuck his mask onto someone else before being chucked into the back of the corpse-mobile . Umm . . . so where's the actual " resurrection " ? What follows is a shlocky assortment of teenage slayings - Freddy , Mikey and Jason must surely have laid waste to most of teen America by now - and massacres . What motivates Mikey ? Never revealed , man . Carpenter used this to good effect first time round . Parts 4 , 5 and 6 - they dropped the roman numerals after III - added truckloads of story to the Michael Myers myth , which , although nothing but hokum , was at least interesting . H20 completely disregarded those movies and went back to killing for no reason . And now once again , it's just pointless bloodshed . Mikey isn't scary . Jason would flatten him in a second . You know that he's always going to get up after being hung , shot , stabbed , poisoned , fired out of a cannon or run over with a steam roller . There is zero suspense . Watching a rubber dog-doo machine make rubber dog-doo is not interesting . And watching a killing machine kill got boring well over a decade ago . It's time to try something new . Halloween : Resurrection tries a little harder , perhaps . And for this reason , it's one of the better sequels . But it's still a big jive turkey in need of a valuable lesson . Horror films should offend and disgust , not regurgitate the failures of previous sequels .
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563,803 | 102,816 | 108,308 | 3 |
Tame and sickening kiddie fare
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Oh dear , if you're diabetic then I would seriously advise against watching this film . It ' so sugary it'll rot the brain right out of your head . Why on earth Eastman and Laird allowed this to be made is beyond me . It's soooooooo far removed from their black and white comic book . Okay , I know the cartoon series was too but the first movie did have a hard edge to it . I mean , take a look at the cover-the Turtles are smiling and happy . Then look a cover of one of the original comic books . They're almost always gritting their teeth and frowning . THAT'S how it should be . Not like this . Even the animatronics look fake . The first 2 had a rather believable Splinter but now he's juddering and stiff and obviously operated by a couple of technicians loitering a few feet off camera . His voice is also totally different and he seems a touch more upbeat and lively . HARDLY the way Splinter is supposed to be . The plot itself defies logic and there are massive holes all over the place . With such a dramatic change in locale from New York to Fuedal Japan you'd think the movie would take advantage of that and go nuts with imagination . But sadly not . It just . . . goes nowhere . I mean , what is the deal with the character of Whit . Why does he look like the great , great , great grandfather of Casey Jones . In fact , the return of Casey is the only reason I am not giving this a 1-star rating . It's a pretty wretched movie but Elias Koteas can make it a tiny bit less unbearable . Hopefully the new cartoon show and the possibility of another ( harder ) movie will cancel this one out . It's nothing but dated , mindless fodder for under-fives . At the risk of repeating myself ; this is NOT how the Turtles should be . Extras are almost non-existent but the animated menus are cool . The 1 . 85 : 1 anamorphic picture is in pretty good shape but the Dolby 5 . 1 track isn't up to much I'm afraid . The film was originally recorded in Dolby SR so this is obviously a remastering job . It's just adequate is all I'm saying .
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564,521 | 102,816 | 120,903 | 3 |
Remember Spawn ?
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Spawn is a dark and humorous comic book that totally rocks . The film contains none of the pathos , imagination or spirit that the comic book had . Its main fault is that it was toned down for a young audience and had to many CGI FX . X-Men suffers from exactly the same problem . There is VERY , VERY little or action and what little there is is very tame and stolen from other movies ( Matrix , T2 ) . Nothing much happens for long periods of time , the dialogue is nothing but mumbo-jumbo and there are plot holes all over the place . Professor X can sense the presence of mutants from far away but cannot notice a bad mutant walking all over his house . Duh ! The ending was ridiculous . It was completely senseless and did not impress me one iota . The word ' contrivance ' echoed around in my head . If the whole scene had been set on the roof of a supermarket instead of the Statue of Liberty ? would it be cool ? Of course the reason it IS on the big statue is because Magneto wants to turn a bunch of people into mutants with what looks like a giant whisk . Uh ? yeah ? that's inspired . Anna Paquin was competent enough , Jackman was pretty cool , Stewart was Picardish , Jansen was underused , McKellen was campy as hell and James Marsden was as woodenly wooden as he was in Gossip and Disturbing Behavior . Thank Mother Nature he only had about 2 lines of dialogue . I cannot think of any reason why this trash is in the IMDb top 250 . It stinks . Perhaps fans of the comic book , who were so disappointed with the film , gave it because they felt they owed it to the X-Men . Me ? I just wasted my money .
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564,389 | 102,816 | 40,515 | 3 |
One of the worst .
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Kitty Foiled is one of the blandest and most generic T & J shorts I have ever seen . I don't think I laughed once . Every gag is a rehash lifted from another cartoon . How many times has Tom's teeth been smashed like a window now ? The short has T & J already involved in a pointless chase as soon as it starts . A canary ( an annoying new character ) witnesses what appears to be Jerry's potential demise and interrupts to save him by attacking Tom , Jerry then saves the canary in a similar way . The bird and the mouse then team up to make the kitty's life hell with lots of boring assaults on Tom . And I just don't care .
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564,477 | 102,816 | 943,269 | 3 |
Superficially fun
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Def Jam Icon is one of the shallowest games I've played in years and is highly repetitive and boring . You get to create what your character looks like but you have to be male and you must be some shade of black / mixed . This character then goes through the trials and tribulations of becoming a big-shot music producer and you fight your way through all the confrontations in between . Sounds like it might make a good game but it's VERY linear and pretty much every decision you make in the management half of the game has little or no effect on anything . How good would it be to download your own tunes onto the PS3 and mix them into new tracks for the game ? Tough , you can't . There are about 10 different environments to fight in but they all get rather tiresome after the millionth battle and there are never any really cool moments when you interact with the crumbling area . Def Jam Icon is all flash and no substance I'm afraid , I actually liked Def Jam Fight for NY a lot better . Graphics B Sound B Gameplay C Lasting Appeal
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564,060 | 102,816 | 465,142 | 3 |
Wrong movie , wrong time
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American Dreamz fails on pretty much everything it set out to do . The basic gist of the plot involves Omer , a hapless terrorist being kicked out of his Afgahnistan training camp because his heart is not in chopping the head of the Western Serpent or something . He relocates to California with wealthy friends , where he accidentally impresses talent scouts for the upcoming American Dreams season ( American Idol , only not ) . The final judge on the show will be none other than the Prez himself so Omer's superiors order him to suicide bomb the final show , killing the Prez in the process . Also appearing in the final round is Sally Kendoo ( a blonde Mandy Moore ) , who isn't the little miss apple pie that she appears to be but a rather vicious and selfish wannabe desperate for fame , not caring who she uses in the process . Her dork boyfriend ( Chris Klein ) has been recently shipped off to Eye-Rack , where he's instantly wounded in battle . The Prez ( an unusual performance from Dennis Quaid ) has been recently re-elected but can't understand why he's been chosen for the job of running the country , so he goes a bit off-the-rails , acting weird and unpredictable while his Chief of Staff ( a brilliant turn by Willem Dafoe ) desperately tries to save face in the ever discriminating public eye . And Martin Tweed ( Hugh Grant as Hugh Grant , again ) keeps all these plot threads held together in a rather course and ramshackle way . None of it is particularly funny or entertaining . As a satire of American Idol it fails , and that's an easy goddamn target to hit . As a mockery of George Warmonger Bush it fails , an even easier target . As a blasphemous mockery of blind religious faith ( a goldmine if approached correctly ) it fails . I don't believe that suicide bombers are something to make light of either . Dozens of people lose their lives every week to these maniacs and to try and make a comedy out of it is obscene Not a lot of effort is put into making the world of this movie seem credible or believable . The ' war ' that Chris Klein is shipped-off to is never clearly defined as the same war Bush started . The ' wrong reasons ' this war was started for , mentioned on the posters , is never once referred to in the movie . I understand that creating a loose connection to reality would be workable if they were going to make some kind of well-formed , articulate statement or pisstake of it , but nothing like that happens . American Dreamz is basically nothing but downright offensive , embarrassing and just plain WRONG ! I think it's extremely arrogant and insensitive of Paul Weitz to make a film like this and to make it so bad as it is , it was hardly worth the effort . Not impressed . Offended yes .
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563,859 | 102,816 | 313,911 | 3 |
What was it called again ?
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If you want a brainless 90 minutes in which you simply do not want to think then this is the kind of movie you might want to rent . Frankie Munitz , mooching off what fame he has left before he becomes a ' former child star ' is the Junior James Bond , a kid in the CIA . Yes , it's stupid but it makes things happen for a while . Hilary Duff is his would-be girlfriend as he freezes up when he talks to girls ( stop it , you're killing me ) . Her dad is some scientist working for a madman ( played by some overtanned Brit ) and he has to infiltrate blah blah blah . . . Yes it is bad , but it could be worse , it could be the sequel . A film so bad and so quickly hashed out that they forgot they already set up Arnold Vosloo as a returning baddie .
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563,976 | 102,816 | 94,824 | 3 |
Not that great and a slap in the face of the original
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I usually give sequels the benefit of the doubt and go easy on them . But this ? is very poor . The exact same as what happened in the first film happens here again . The exact same . Only they wanted younger kids to be able see it ( this accounts for the repeated presence of Bugs Bunny but why they threw in one ' fck ' is beyond me ) . They didn't even bother to change Jackie Mason's character from Dangerfield's . Let me explain , in CADDYSHACK Rodney Dangerfield played a boorish Real Estate owner who enrages the uptight members of Bushwood country club . In this movie Jackie Mason plays a boorish Real Estate owner who enrages the uptight members of Bushwood country club . A big effort they made to change the content of the script huh ? No , I don't think so . A very unfunny Dan Aykroyd shamefully copies Bill Murray's character . He even goes after the gopher ( now more like a Gremlin ) in much the same fashion as Murray did . There is not a laugh to be had . A sample of the ' comedy ' in this film : Jackie Mason is getting ready for a hot date with Dyan Cannon . He is in the bathroom is his robe . He moves to the door to get dressed in his bedroom when ? the door handle breaks off . Wow ! ? ! That's the best they can do . Eight years to think of a completely new sequel and that's all we get ! ? ! I could have pulled a better script out of my ass . See it only if you're a die-hard fan of the original . It's the only way you'll find any kind of laughs in it . Everyone else steer clear .
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564,517 | 102,816 | 93,201 | 4 |
Very odd
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It's weird how the writer / director of such exciting blockbusters such as ID4 and The Patriot could create such a strange film . I'll try my hardest to recount the plot . Two ultra-cheap filmmakers ( art reflects life ) have a great idea for a movie and rope in an unwilling but attractive starlet and make up a Muppet-like monster based on the photographs of a long-dead grandfather's butler . A rival studio producer wants to blow up the grandfather's house as the climax to his big budget movie so the butler's ghost comes back to possess the Muppet doll to lead them to hidden billions in the cellar . It's not a bad film , by no means , it's quite cringe-worthy in places but inconsistently entertaining . There are no big name stars or SFX but that is made up for with bizarre plotting and storyline . This film is more in the style of Roland Emmerich in his Making Contact / Moon 44 days . But if he had the budget he gets these days who knows what this film might have ended up as . I give it for weirdness , plot and defying convention .
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564,159 | 102,816 | 442,703 | 4 |
The easiest game I have ever played !
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It's all over in a matter of minutes seriously . The game involves Spidey going out to buy Mary-Jane a fishbowl but he gets caught up in rumble downtown as several of his enemies run riot . It's up to him to sort them out . In 7 very short levels the game is over . And you'll be left with your jaw hanging open that a game can be so easy . The beat-em-up aspect of the game is pretty lame , all the bad guys look the same , the music is often bland , the level design is dated and the gameplay even less engaging than Spider-Man vs the Kingpin on the Sega Genesis 10 years previous . If you see this game on sale for a matter of pennies then go for it . Otherwise avoid ! Graphics C Sound C Gameplay C Lasting Appeal
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564,555 | 102,816 | 35,120 | 4 |
Pay your taxes !
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I didn't quite get this cartoon as the tax system in this country is very , very different from that in America . It appears that if Donald Duck pays his taxes early then somehow it will give the American government a better chance at winning WWII . This Donald does with worrying eagerness . So much so he races across the country with the envelope in his hand instead of relying on the postal system ( do you blame him ? ) . Nothing much else of interest . It does say on a tax form though , that Donald has adopted his nephews Huey , Duey and Luey . This I never knew . It was also up from an Academy Award for Documentary Short Subject .
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564,139 | 102,816 | 295,297 | 4 |
Quite boring !
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One might imagine that because Chris Columbus pulled off a faithful , yet exciting , movie adaptation of the first Harry Potter adventure that he would be able to it a second time . I'm sorry to report that he definitely has not . There are so many things wrong with this film and almost nothing to recommend it . More than two-and-a-half hours are spent rolling around in pure tedium - only the REALLY easily pleased will be entertained . The story has a slightly harder tone than the first , but there is nothing on display that will discomfort anyone of any age . Harry is being mentally tortured and starved by his muggle family during the summer holidays . He longs to go back to Hogwarts , but a Jar-Jar Binks lookalike elf , called Dobby , turns up in his bedroom and warns him that terrible things await him there . It's six of one and half a dozen of the other for Harry , as the Dursleys can be just as evil as anything the chamber of secrets has to offer . Once Harry gets to school - by means of a flying Ford Anglia - his fellow pupils are frozen with fear at the slightest glimpse of something evil . Harry hears voices in the walls that no one else can . And he suffers from the incompetence of the new Defence Against The Black Arts teacher , Gilderoy Lockhart ( Kenneth Branagh , totally miscast ) , who is not as funny as in the book . Five minutes after we are re-introduced to the students and teachers , the film slips into a clumsy mishmash of poorly staged scenes and bad acting . First time around it was easy to turn a blind eye to the amateurism of these kids . But there's no excusing it now . They've had a year to study their performances and see what was right and wrong - I know , I know , they're only kids . Trust me , none of them will be thanking the Academy anytime soon , which makes most of their scenes difficult to watch . Even with the support of such talent as Richard Harris , Alan Rickman and Maggie Smith - Robbie Coltrane is seriously underused - they cannot handle the weight of the material . Their acting seems a few seconds behind the adults and any scene with them together has big contrasts between veteran and novice . Steven Kloves ' screenplay tears out many pages and cuts so many corners from J . K . Rowling's book - once again , Rik Mayall is completely left out - in order to keep a tight pace . Yet the film still manages to be dull and boring . Nothing REALLY happens . And there are far too many pauses and silences in dialogue scenes - an absolute crime in a film of this length . With the exception of the chamber of secrets - which holds precious few secrets , I might add - no part of Hogwarts is explored . Almost the entire movie is shot in a generic corridor and you can bet your bottom dollar that for the other locations Columbus just shot the same set from a different angle . The lighting is conveniently yellow-candlelit , when he wants it to be mysterious , or comfortable , and green , or blue , when it should be menacing . Some credit should be given to the director for trying to make it a little bit darker than before . There's nothing visually disturbing , but the sight of a petrified Hermione and the angles he uses for the film's many and lengthy dialogue scenes echo film noir rather than tame , family friendly blockbuster . Aside from one quidditch match and the final showdown , there is nothing of interest . The mystery is very weak and straight-forward . There is too much talk and not enough action . It doesn't bode well for the rest of the series , which has so far been equally as dull . All the best elements that made the original entertaining are not here . Hagrid has less than five minutes screen time and Columbus exploits our disappointment by giving him a big applause at the end . This did not happen in the book and he only does it because that's his style , to force the audience to cry ( Home Alone , Bicentennial Man ) .
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564,235 | 102,816 | 353,333 | 4 |
Simple and Slow
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Don't get me wrong , I love Darkwing Duck ( where is the series on DVD ? ) but this game does not do him justice . The graphics are nice and look wonderful on a wide TV screen but it's a stiff and slow game to play . What really rattled my chain is that too often a baddie , who is nowhere near you , will take health off you even though he doesn't touch you . Forget ducking ( heh heh ) out of the way in time because the game is too slow to react . And there is practically no way of attacking the baddies apart from using the gas gun , which has no affect on most of them and runs out pretty quickly . The story is quite good though and for all that it is pretty to look at and family-friendly it's the gameplay that really lets this one down . I played the Turbo-Grafx version , which has better graphics than the NES and is a more fleshed-out game . But it's the gameplay that matters and if the NES version isn't as stiff then perhaps you should get that one instead of hunting down the increasingly elusive Turbo-Grafx version . Graphics Sound Gameplay Lasting Appeal
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564,360 | 102,816 | 110,725 | 4 |
Grossly over-indulgent vanity piece
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At the height of his fame Seagal was allowed to direct this monstrosity about evil Texas oil Aegis company polluting Alaska . With no prior experience in directing Steve stampeded his way into this movie with as much subtlety as a brick in the face . Originally called ' Spirit Warrior ' and hoping to cast loads of English baddies ( among them Anthony Hopkins and Jeremy Irons ) the film is a horrid example of far too much creative control given to one man too blinkered by his own agenda to bother giving us anything resembling decent storytelling . There is nothing significant or exceptional about Seagal's direction . Nor is the action very well done . It's cut too lazily and not shot for maximum viewing clarity . But what reeks about the story is that some big oil magnate called Michael Jennings ( a completely hammy Michael Caine ) wants to build a really shoddy oil rig in Alaska made out of dodgy parts because the rights to the land are about to revert back to the Eskimos after 30 years of non-use . So why wait 30 years to build the bloody thing ? Seagal plays Forrest Taft , an oil rig fireman who suddenly develops a conscience and is promptly eliminated from the payroll by way of being blown up . Only he is rescue by the Eskimos and , this is where the film just goes insane , goes on a spiritual journey in which he wrestles bears and turns into eagles and stuff . I mean , what the hell is all that about ? ? ? Don't even get me started on the scene where he makes a fully-grown hard-ass redneck cry in a bar full of similar stereotypes when the philosophy touches his soul . Then he gets his old self back together and sets about righting all the wrongs of Aegis Oil and saving the environment by littering it with dead bad guys . Jennings hires a bunch of mercenaries ( including R . Lee Ermey and Billy Bob Thornton ) to take out Taft but of course they all prove to be useless since Taft is revealed to be an ex-CIA Agent ( oh dear God . . ) Nothing much really happens apart from shooting and dying and Seagal beating up nameless extras . We've seen all of this before and it's no different this time round . I do appreciate his environmentally friendly attitude but it could have made it a little less obvious and campy . Seagal's tacked on speech at the end originally ran for 30 minutes ( Jeezuz sufferin ' ) but Warner finally stepped in and said a big no-no . We could have had an Oliver Stone or Insider amount of paranoia and conspiracy but this just ends up as the worst of Seagal's Hollywood movies .
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563,760 | 102,816 | 323,194 | 4 |
A classic in no way .
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The original Mario Bros . is pretty much THE most simplest , and boring , platformer you're ever likely to come across . Back then , Mario was no more than the tiny little sprite from Donkey Kong ( called Jumpman ) who vaguely looked like a plumber with red dungarees and a moustache . This time around he's given his own game and a new name and partnered with his brother Luigi ( in green dungarees ) to erm . . . not do that much really . All you do in this game is jump between 3 or 4 different platforms knocking over typical creatures of the Mario franchise . Yup , that's it ! That's everything this game is about . I don't know about you but I'd be pretty upset if I paid for this in the arcade , even if it was 1983 . I got this as an extra with Super Mario Advance 4 so at least I never went out of my way to pay for it . And neither should you . Graphics D Sound D Gameplay F Lasting Appeal
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564,598 | 102,816 | 390,615 | 4 |
What the hell ?
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Um . . . I'm not quite sure how I should describe this film , before telling you what I think . It's not a film about war , or even anything related to war . I'm not sure where this comes from . Early on , one of the narrators , a young boy , claims the world has ended . If so , one can only assume by a war of some kind . But , if the world has ended , how come people are still walking around ? Why is there traffic on the roads ? I am confused ! ! ! Shot in black-and-white on a hand cranked camera - how rebellious and cool , I might add - the film lingers and breezes around what appears to be dilapidated , backwoods , hillbilly towns in the middle of nowhere . Think of the location for Wrong Turn . Nothing much is going on . There is an ancient radio , constantly playing an over-the-top evangelist , a boy and his dog mucking around in the er . . . muck , an alcoholic priest who likes to eat and some bearded junkyard guy who wants to blow his brain out . There is hardly any dialogue , only narration . Much of the sound is from archival and stock recordings . The gritty , flickering , b & w picture looks real cool , but it doesn't capture anything of interest . There is no plot , only a succession of unconnected scenes taped together . " This is the world after the end of the world , acre by acre , fence by fence , the war is lost " is the tagline . I have no clue as to what it means . Me and most of the audience were lost in a very strange world , with no idea what the hell was going on . Ordinarily I would give a film like this a rating . But there's something about the raw edge and dream like quality that makes me give it instead . In an ideal world , I would love to make some kind of weirdo thingy like this and I adore the fact that it was shot on a hand-cranked camera . I've never seen a movie made with something like that . I feel even cooler than usual now . And that's mighty cool indeed .
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563,789 | 102,816 | 41,521 | 4 |
I guess they were running short of money
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This cartoon is one of the earliest forms of a ' clip show ' that I have seen . You've seen ( and no doubt been annoyed ) the episodes of The Simpsons where they go ' remember when ' before cutting to old footage , thus trimming down on the cost of original production . Well , that's what happens here . Tom is planning the usual amount of torture for Jerry when the radio warns him that it is ' Be Nice To Animals Day ' . Convinced that he should be kind for once , Tom bakes the mouse a cake , grabs some presents and waits by his hole . But Jerry ain't home , and it's a perfect opportunity for Tom to grab his diary and reminisce about all the time the mouse got the better of him , cue the old footage . One to skip .
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564,842 | 102,816 | 367,501 | 4 |
Awkward and uncomfortable .
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I'll still maintain that the laugh track on I'm Alan Partridge dates it somewhat , especially in comparison to similar shows like The Office or Extras , but it's absence on this one-off TV Special kind of makes it a bit difficult . By this point , Alan Partridge is just reduced to an idiot who makes the worst of every situation and crosses almost every single person he encounters . I hate the fact that Steve Coogan chose to take his most popular character in this easy , Homer Simpson-like direction but that's beside the point . Alan is interviewed in a sort of Sunday morning BBC one-to-one with a presenter who makes a poor effort at making falseness of it seem genuine . Neither of them have a clue what they are doing and the only focus seems to be Alan's misunderstood autobiography and his hatred for London or people who don't share his views . Not that good .
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563,823 | 102,816 | 411,906 | 4 |
Boring .
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Though miles better than the ( awful ) first game this still suffers from major bore . The free-roaming game play would be great if there were a bit more variety and things to do . The main problem is that the gaming area is absolutely immense . While this may be a good thing ( a whole state is your gaming area in the upcoming GTA : San Andreas ) there are very few definitive landmarks to give you some kind of orientation . It's based on the real New York , with all the famous buildings , but literally hundreds of streets look the same and it's very , very easy to get hopelessly lost . Plus the only method of travel is swinging . Yes , it's cool , but very slow considering the area you have to cover and not to easy to control unless your a genius with the control pad . And the missions are all the same . Stop an armoured car hijack , stop a guy stealing a car , save some idiot hanging off a building , beating up nameless thugs , save some guy hanging off a building , stop some guy stealing a car , save some guy hanging off a building . . . boring . When you complete a mission that should be it done for the whole game , none of this again and again and again trash . The average score for completing these missions is 250 hero points . . . you need 1 , 000 , 000 to reach Doc Ock at the end of the game . Sorry I ain't sticking around long enough to 4000 tedious missions . The only cool thing about this game is that it's narrated by Bruce Campbell . The rest seems like a rushed movie tie-in , not a real game .
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564,870 | 102,816 | 223,503 | 4 |
Dud
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Talk about being boring ! I got this expecting a fascinating insight into the life of the man who wrote the mythical Night on the Galactic Railroad . I expected to see crazy stories and hijinks of an eccentric man and to discover his inspirations for such bizarre material . Boy , was I wrong . Spring and Chaos is mostly boring with only sporadic moments of innovative animation . It's certainly nothing to write home about and nowhere near as good as NOTGR which is something that I suggest you watch instead . Leave this bore alone . If you absolutely MUST see then either rent it or find it somewhere cheap . Do not pay top dollar .
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563,818 | 102,816 | 120,655 | 4 |
Who's your buddy ?
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I'll admit it ; I have never seen any other Kevin Smith movie aside from Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back . And even in that movie his lack of class and tendency for cheap vulgarity kind of turns me off him . Despite some moments of ( often childish ) humor ( any bit with Jay and Silent Bob and the cool ' new ' Jesus image ) , Dogma mostly fails on every one of its intentions . Rather than the ' epic ' most people are calling this film I consider it to be way overlong and overbearingly self-indulgent . It seems that Kevin Smith has a savage and acidicly cynical view of the Catholic Church and rather than making a movie that unravels any hypocrisies or sheds light on double standards he's made a sprawling shambles that too often goes off in lumbering tangents ( one of Smith's constant failings ) . There's nothing unsubtle or smooth about Dogma . No class or dignity . The dialogue may be considered as biting satire to the casual viewer , but it's actually increasingly tiresome and nothing more than exposition . I kid you not ; over 90 % of the dialogue in this film is expositional and bores to tears . There's nothing worse than Chris Rock , Linda Fiorentino and Selma Hayek rambling on and on and on with nothing happening and still they go on and on and on and on and on . . . I cannot believe that there are 100 minutes of deleted scenes from this movie . How on earth the full cut of this movie was tolerated by even the editors is a mystery to me . Proof positive that Kevin Smith has no control over his ' creative ' tantrum . There is also the bonus of having the WORST musical score in history ( and that includes Harry Manfredini's jarring noises in Jason Goes To Hell ) . What a horrible , headache-inducing drone it was ! The DVD is in 2 . 35 : 1 anamorphic widescreen with Dolby 5 . 1 sound , so now you can enjoy that awful score in its full glory on your home theatre . A plethora of extras are , for some reason , included on this DVD . Which is only further proof that the film thinks it's far better than it actually is . There are ' real ' good movies that don't get this many extra features on DVD and I assure you I have no intention of knowing more of this film .
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563,779 | 102,816 | 171,363 | 4 |
A clunker that is alternately good and terrible
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This is definitely better than HOHH but it was panned severely by critics because of the extreme overdose of CGI and the camp-Gothic sets . Like HOHH , it is a remake of the original of the same name . The original Haunting was quite good for it's day . But let's be honest ? it's not it's day anymore . But what annoyed ME most about this movie was Lillie Taylor's character . I just didn't like how she whispered every word and was a bit of a weirdo . The ending's a little corny but some decent frights throughout make up for that . The sound design in the cinema was incredible . I was very scary and you really did feel like there were ghosts behind you and from every other direction . It was most impressive . HOHH tried to be quick and frenetic . In doing so it lost character and dialogue . But The Haunting takes a little bit of time to build and in some places is almost a psychological horror . For these ambitions alone , it is better than House on Haunted Hill .
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564,371 | 102,816 | 143,145 | 4 |
No excitement
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Probably the least exciting Bond movie ever made and that's including the Lazenby one . Nothing happens that is worth mentioning . There's a scene with a pipe or something that is good for about 2 seconds . The rest is an unbroken succession of bore after bore after bore . How on earth the filmmakers thought that audiences would be entertained by this is a mystery to me . Robert Carlyle is so unscary he belongs in Sesame Street . Denise Richards is a nuclear scientist ( ! ) who wears tight fitting tops and hot pants instead of the white coat . Director Michael Apted seemed an odd choice to me and he has succeeded in making every single scene as dull and leaden and unimpressive as it is possible . Watch this movie only if you are a Bond fan . If you watch them just like any other movie though . . . do NOT waste your cash .
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564,068 | 102,816 | 32,439 | 4 |
What the . . . ? ? ?
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In Elmer Fudd's first ever appearance we do not get the Elmer we know and love but fatter guy with a huge head and an ugly bulbous nose . He puts together a ' camera ' ( snigger ) and heads to the woods to take pictures of wildlife . Once there he settle for a picture of Bugs Bunny . Or at least something very remotely resembling ( and sounding nothing like ) Bugs Bunny . Bugs then proceeds to torment him for no good reason . The cartoon feels like the Itchy and Scratchy parody ' Worker and Parasite ' from an episode of The Simpsons . The one even Krusty himself yells ' What the hell was that ? ' to . Neither Bugs nor Elmer seem at all familiar and act way out of character . Not very good at all .
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563,982 | 102,816 | 97,428 | 4 |
Lighthearted , soulless sequel
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A lot of the original magic is absent in this belated sequel . The storyline isn't up to much and is never taken full advantage of . One thing that is sorely missed is the wide , power score from the first film . Elmer Bernstein was ditched and the music was done by long-time hack Randy Edelman used none of the themes from the original . It's all just light-hearted cues that are used . The plot takes a backseat to long character explanation and development . The Ghostbusters have been out of business since blowing up Central Park West . They are forbidden from performing public services . But a narrow-minded Judge wants to send them to jail for causing a massive blackout . Then , 2 ghosts show up and they bust them and before you can say ' who ya gonna call ? ' they are back busting undead ass . Something I find very stupid and annoying about the plot is that the aforementioned Judge and a City Attorney repeatedly say that they do not believe in ghosts . Obviously these guys have forgotten about the 200-foot marshmallow man and the evil voice of Gozer booming all over Manhattan Island . But the villain isn't as scary as the Gozer . This time it's Vigo , a 14th century madman who wants to return to living form and has targeted Weaver's child as his host . He plans to do this before the stroke of midnight on New Years Eve 1989 or some baloney . For a film that has it's build-up and climax on New Year's Eve there is No mention Xmas whatsoever . And the ending with the hidden painting is REALLY corny . I scoop of trivia : In the montage with the Ghostbusters running all over New York after suddenly coming back into Business we see a clip of Ray driving like a maniac and Peter gives him a strange look . This scene was originally going to follow after the scene in which Ray is hypnotised by the painting of Vigo . The Ectomobile was supposed to crash into a tree in Central Park and we see a shot of the license plate fall off and Ray come out of his trance . But this entire scene was cut from the film and is only left in the montage .
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564,804 | 102,816 | 91,499 | 4 |
Great opening
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But it's all downhill from there on . For about 20 minutes this movie promises to be cool and funny thru-out but quickly becomes boring and stupid . The characters just do not use simple logic and it is way hard to side with them . I really did want the trucks to run them over . Beware , there may be some spoilers here . Everyone at the truck stop knows that Mr . Hendershot has a truckload of weapons and rocket launchers in the basement . So why don't they just use them against the trucks ? Duh ? The dialogue sucks too . There is not one memorable line in the entire movie . And the acting is sporadically bad . The girl who becomes Emilio Estevez's girlfriend is very beautiful but she cannot act her way out of a linen closet . The pointless AC / DC soundtrack is totally worthless and contributes ZERO to the film . For Spiderman fans ( like me ) there is a bonus tho , as there is a huge face of the Green Goblin on the toy truck . But that's still no reason to watch this farce . The reason these trucks are coming to life is because the earth is caught in the tail of a comet ( which we never see ) and all machines are rebelling against mankind . We don't see many other machines other than the trucks but it turns out that it was all just a plot by aliens to sweep us off the planet . This is unseen also , we are simply told this from words on the screen at the end of the movie . COME ON ! Stephen King should stick to writing as he has handled this film VERY badly and this is very strange as he should know how to transfer his book to film . There is another movie version called TRUCKS . Perhaps you should check that out instead as I cannot imagine anything being worse than this . I do think that if John Carpenter directed this film it could have been cool , but let's just forget about it ? quickly .
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564,567 | 102,816 | 422,335 | 4 |
Generic first person shooter
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I'm really rather sick of first person shooter games . They are a dime a dozen and with all the Medal of Honor and Call of Duty games out there do we really need another ? The previous game in the Bond universe was Everything or Nothing , which wasn't a first person shooter , something new . But this one goes back to something old . There is a bit of a twist though . It's fun to play a villain , there's a little bit of RPG ( only a touch ) and the villains from the older movies ( such as Dr No , Blofeld , Oddjob , Goldfinger and Francisco Scaramanga ) come back , even though they are supposed to be very , very , long , long dead . But this novelty didn't last long and I quickly became bored of the game . Plus there is too much going on . Hooked up to a home theatre this game is loud and thrilling but it will easily induce epileptic seizures so beware . Plus the targeting is terrible . If you have a gun that sprays bullets everywhere you will still have trouble killing a lone enemy in the distance . This got highly irritating . As these type of games go even Die Hard : Vendetta was better . Nice music though . Rent it to try it out first as buying blind would be a serious error in judgment .
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563,911 | 102,816 | 475,297 | 4 |
Not hooked .
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If a game doesn't hook me within the first half-hour then I'm just not going to see it through to the end . Homeworld just seemed like Age of Empires : In Space to me and the slow , confusing gameplay really got on my nerves . I know that this game has an Army of fans who will denounce my comments , but I simply could not get into it . Usually , I like space games and I was hoping that this would have a Star Trek-ish feel to it . I also quite the Wing Commander games and since it only cost me 99p then I thought I might as well give it a go . Call me shallow , but it didn't give me instant satisfaction and uninstalled it after only 45 minutes .
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564,656 | 102,816 | 30,152 | 4 |
Cruel , evil and barbaric .
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I'm dead against Fox hunting . It's just plain evil and it's not even a bloody sport . It's just bloody . It's banned here in Britain though evil toffs still participate in and don't get arrested . Donald and Goofy are on such a hunt . They don't manage to kill the fox as the horses are lame and the dogs are too dumb to rip the poor animal apart . In fact , nothing at all really happens in this 8-minute cartoon other than the dogs leading Donald the wrong way . While I hate the hunt you have to appreciate that this was made during Disney's non-PC days . Nothing like this would be made now . The very core of what Disney build his empire on has been quashed by the PC dunderhead execs that run it now . If Walt were alive today he'd be furious .
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564,198 | 102,816 | 380,268 | 4 |
If the Sun ' newspaper ' made a documentary it would be this .
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Right , let me begin by saying that the tagline of this film is wrong . ' The true story that inspired Scarface ' . Um . . . isn't Scarface a remake of a film from the 30s ? And wasn't the bulk of Scarface's writing and production already complete by the time this documentary really gets to any story in it's chronological order ? If you like watching TV shows in which you're bombarded with endless montages of unsourced and random facts then this is for you . But seriously , I have seen better production values on Channel 5 . Calling this TV quality stuff is an insult to TV . The editing is all over the place and it frequently looks like the filmmakers are trying to edit together a sentence that wasn't actually said . If you have seen the episode of The Simpsons in which Homer is interviewed on TV by Godfrey Jones then you'll know what I mean . Credit must be given to the crew for actually managing to track down the majority of the drug dealing scum and murderers for honest and open interviews . But with practically no archive footage to work with the film looks incredibly bland . It's also way too long and you'll be looking at your watch by the 80-minute mark . A sequel is in production ( oh , lucky us ) detailing the life of the Psycho Woman in charge of it all , but you'll excuse me if I have more interesting things to do , like licking the dust from the skirting board behind the radiator .
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564,527 | 102,816 | 167,760 | 4 |
Cheap propaganda
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Using lots of recycled animation ( most obviously from The Band Concert ) this Disney wartime cartoon , made for screening in Canadian cinemas , is very unsubtle and is more of a frank advertisement than anything else . It's yet another one of those shorts that does nothing but promote war bonds 4 for 5 . I still have no clue what this means despite seeing half a dozen cartoons like this . And it got boring after the first one . It's amazing people still bought war bonds after being bored by cartoons such as this . I would certainly be spending my hard earned dough on myself instead of war bonds . Though if the cartoons got worse I would just buy the bonds to shut them up in the end . Disney did some shocking and interesting wartime shorts but this the cheapest and most boring I've seen so far .
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564,591 | 102,816 | 276,816 | 4 |
Ghost Ship it ain't
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In fact it's more like Event Horizon underwater . The first half was pretty cool and built up a good deal of suspense . But as it nears the end the story falls into incoherence and suffers from obviously deleted scenes . If the script were tighter then this film could have been great as David Twohy's direction is not really to blame . He creates a unique atmosphere and nice underwater visuals that give the film an original look . I just wish that the horror / spooky aspect of the movie were stronger . When the ghosts appear they do so in a genuinely creepy way that seems ' realistic ' . It's these parts of Below that I like but it gets way too silly towards the end . The cast is unusually solid with the exception of Olivia Williams , who is horribly miscast and fails to make any connection with the audience or bring her character to life . The DVD is sports a powerful Dolby 5 . 1 soundtrack with a great looking 1 . 85 : 1 anamorphic transfer .
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564,777 | 102,816 | 292,100 | 4 |
Poor and tedious game
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Thank heavens I bought this in a clearance sale . It did not keep my attention for long and for 2 reasons . First , it is a very easy game and very quickly finished and second , there just wasn't enough going on . The graphics were atmospheric and did create a cool mood similar to that of the movie but the sound was barely noticed . Slight music and sound effects kicked in once or twice each level and the voices were so obviously not Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones . Puzzles are easily solved and there is practically no mystery . The gameplay is simply dull . Character control is shockingly dated and there isn't even much for them ( you can play K , J or um . . . Linda Fiorentino ) to do . All you basically do is walk around in a very limited environment where usually nothing fills the screen . Considering the scale and ambition of so many modern games this one seems extremely primitive in comparison . Definitely not worth attention for anyone over the age of 8 .
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564,327 | 102,816 | 942,385 | 4 |
Why does Tom Cruise ?
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There's nothing in Tropic Thunder that you haven't seen Ben Stiller spoof before , and spoof better , in five minute clips such as Mission : Improbable or Die Hard 12 : Die Hungry . His character of Tugg Speedman is yet another one of his many un-self-aware stereotypes like Derek Zoolander or White Goodman . Besides this , what is most disappointing about Tropic Thunder is the fact that Stiller had all the pieces to make a truly great and sublime comedy , but he messed it up . Yes , I did laugh here and there but I'm afraid that most of the jokes miss the mark and the comic timing is a little bit off . The randomness of some scenes defy the internal logic and seem like they belong in a different film . I was wishing for a sharp satire on modern Hollywood , but all we get are unironic bad-taste gags . The fake trailers in the opening are the best part . The cast are mostly wasted , and the motivations of their stupid actions seem to be lost on them , the actors they are playing and the roles those actors are playing . Get your head around that . I think that Stiller got a little muddled when writing the script . They never really kill anyone and we never know if they are firing blanks or not . And if they are , why don't they pick up some real guns when they have the chance ? It's better than Zoolander by a million miles , though it's really sad how a film this flat and uninspired blows the box office away while something like Last Action Hero , a very similar film which is a hundred times as good , ends up being a flop and laughed at whenever it's brought up in conversation . Do yourself a favor , skip Tropic Thunder and spent the night inside with the DVD of Arnie's misunderstood 1993 epic .
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563,934 | 102,816 | 25,997 | 4 |
Mildly entertaining cartoon for 3 year olds .
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The ' Silly Symphony ' , The Wise Little Hen feels more like one of those huge , books with thick cardboard pages you read to infants in order to help them learn basic words and morals . It may be notable for the first appearance of Donald Duck ( in a supporting role ) but the rest of it is mainly annoying . I seriously do not like the Peter Pig character and I do not ever want to see him again . He was fat and rude with a rubbish voice . And the mother hen had this irritating gimmick of clucking out certain words . The story goes that the Hen and her chicks need help planting her corn . Pete and Donald pretend to be ill but once the corn grows ( no thanks to them ) they feel well enough to eat it . Too bad the hen is only serving them Castor oil . Hope the lesson isn't too subtle .
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564,226 | 102,816 | 408,816 | 4 |
A waste of a license
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Ghostbusters II was a pretty average movie and not a good video game . I got this for my Commodore 64 way back in 1989 . And I paid full price for it too ( a whopping £9 . 99 ) and it came in one of those over-sized cardboard boxes . It looked like it should have been great . It wasn't . Basically , there were 4 levels , all with different gameplay . Which would have been fine if the first level were not so bloody hard . Remember that scene in the movie where Ray got lowered deep into the sewers and discovered a river of slime ? Well it's that scene that makes the first level . You control Ray as he descends , trying to avoid big hands coming out of the walls and other little nasties . If they got too close the rope snapped and you fell into oblivion . It was too hard . The rope always snapped . Luckily though I figured out a cheat and managed to play the other 3 levels in which you played the Statue of Liberty as it stomped through New York and took on Vigo inside the museum . But nothing seemed to ease my anger at the difficulty of the first level . Not a good game and certainly not one I would rush out to buy . The graphics and gameplay were at their best on the Amiga and DOS versions of this game if you simply must though . Graphics C Sound C Gameplay C Lasting Appeal
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564,021 | 102,816 | 462,281 | 4 |
Just not fun to play .
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I am very disappointed with this game . It may have very nice and cartoony graphics but the gameplay is terrible . You play Eduardo and Kylie from the TV series and must defeat an evil Count called Mercharior who has kidnapped other members of the Ghostbusters . There are only four levels : the old building , the graveyard , the theatre and the botanical gardens . Before making your way through these bland platforming stages you must race to the destination on time in a top-racing stage where you control Ecto-1 . Both are dull and could have been taken a lot further . It seems like such a rushed and unfinished product . The music is boring , the ghosts are generic and the level design is annoying . You never really get the real sense of busting ghosts since you just shoot them with the Ion ray and they vanish . There's no use of the PKE meter or holding or trapping and it just turns the game into a platforming shooter . And why is there no save system ? This password crap is a joke . The GBA does have a save function you know ! If you're a total Ghostbusters fan then pick this up cheap . Otherwise leave it be , it stands out neither as a Ghostbusters product nor as a semi-decent game . Slimer appears on the box but isn't even in the game ! Graphics Sound Gameplay Lasting Appeal
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564,377 | 102,816 | 360,139 | 4 |
Bland , generic teen romance
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I'm a bit of a sucker when it comes to Mandy Moore , I loved A Walk to Remember and Saved but I'm afraid there's nothing new or interesting about Chasing Liberty . A girl who just happens to be the President's daughter ( one of those safe , non-mass-murdering , non-greed-driven , non-corrupt President's that only exist in movies ) escapes her parents clutches to go off on an unrestricted journey of self-discovery yadda yadda yadda . But here's the catch , the man she's travelling with is working for her dad . Gee , do you think she'll be heartbroken when she finds out ? How utterly predictable . The romance blossoming between the two agents tailing her ( Annabella Sciorra and the great Jeremy Piven ) is more interesting but hardly brilliance . Her journey across Europe isn't even that interesting and she meets nothing more than assortment of stereotypes along the way . If a Euro-travelogue movie is what your after than go for European Vacation . The movie is presented in 2 . 35 : 1 anamorphic widescreen with Dolby 5 . 1 sound and a bunch of extras I so do not care for . Sorry Mandy , I am unimpressed this time .
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564,844 | 102,816 | 62,765 | 4 |
Not impressed !
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Somewhere inside the overlong , 114-minute Bullitt there is a brisk 90-minute long film desperate to get out . But as it is , it's seriously overlong with nothing to sustain it . Many pointless scenes come and go with loads of long , indulgent tracking shots goose-up the running time . I almost nodded-off a few times , I honestly don't see what all the fuss is about regarding this film . The paper-thin story has Detective Bullitt trying to determine how a Mob informant in Police custody managed to be killed ( he's not actually killed until about an hour later though ) . A local politician ( Robery Vaughn , who didn't really want to do the film ) acts as the token bureaucrat , standing in the way of getting things done . But getting WHAT done exactly ? In 114 minutes almost NOTHING happens in this damn movie ! Instead of mystery , clues , police procedure , shoot-outs and problem-solving we're treated to scene after scene of . . . not much . Bullitt eats food at the hospital , he goes shopping for celery and TV dinners , he hangs around with his girlfriend ( a completely pointless character played by Jaqueline Bissett ) and sometimes takes a passing interest in the case . About 80-minutes into this bore he is FINALLY involved in a car chase ( THE car chase that everyone raves about ) that ' tears up ' the streets of San Francisco . I don't understand why this film has so much adoration or why all the fans proclaim it's ' the original and best ' , ' the one that started it all ' or any other generic soundbite you can think of . There were cop movies before this , there were car chases before this . What exactly is Bullitt credited with ' starting ' ? A sense of being cool , calm and collected doesn't turn water into wine . Bullitt is plain , repetitive , agonizingly slow and almost completely without a plot . Don't consider me a philistine or someone who has been brainwashed by the over-edited nature of modern films where we're guaranteed and explosion every five minutes . I appreciate films from all eras and from all backgrounds . But Bullitt is just way , way overrated certainly does not deserve the high regard it's been lauded with . A real disappointment .
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564,775 | 102,816 | 133,093 | 4 |
Not THAT original
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I've always called the first Matrix film a rip-off . It's a mix of many different films put together with important parts stolen from the Terminator ( robots rule the future and have enslaved the remainder of humanity ) , Total Recall ( futuristic ' Is it a dream or reality ' sci-fi ) and even Johnny Mnemonic ( futuristic cyberpunk genre starring Keanu Reeves as a guy who can plug computers into his head and ' go into them ' ) , plus various other works by William Gibson and a lot of Anime . It does deliver a lot of potential ( that the sequels failed to honor ) and has been influential on post-modern action but no matter how much I know The Matrix is loved I just can't get over the fact that I've seen most of it in other movies . It's the style of the Matrix that's more fondly cherished than the story . It won 4 technical Academy Awards , proving that all the Matrix is is eye-candy . Call that narrow-minded if you want but I believe this movie is no more than a very , very popular cult movie . A contradiction in terms yes , but still the most appropriate way of describing it . I only bought this DVD because it was super-cheap and came in a new purple keep-case instead of the flimsy old snappers . The DVD is in 2 . 40 : 1 anamorphic widescreen and has Dolby 5 . 1 sound .
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563,900 | 102,816 | 183,005 | 4 |
Real Easy
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This was a very easy game to finish but it was still fun for a while . Even if you are a novice gamer you can still finish this one in about 2 weeks . But there was a major problem with it . There was so much footage that we never got see that involved the relationships between the characters . The plot always took over just when the voyeuristic appeal was setting in . There was never any way around this so the game almost followed the same path every single time . The ' revelation ' at the end was pretty disappointing and the climax was all over too quickly . And Corey Haim must have been totally desperate for work for appearing in this . The Sega CD version has really crappy lo-res video too .
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564,396 | 102,816 | 464,095 | 4 |
Pretentious bore .
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The Lives of the Saints starts off with an atmospheric vision of London as a bustling city of busy , quaint streets and sunshine . I was hoping it would maintain this atmosphere , but it gets bogged down in a story that goes pretty much nowhere . Othello works for big , fat Mr . Karva , his crime-boss step-dad ( at least I think that is what he is supposed to be because it's never really defined , but he does drop kittens into deep fat friers , so trust me , he's a prick ) doing scrappy little errands while his skanky girlfriend gives daddy hand-jobs . One of his colleagues is Runner , a black dude who is always dashing from A to B . Until the day he comes across almost mute homeless child who grants him his wish of being able to stop running . Runner dumps the lost boy in Othello's flat , where he promptly starts granting more wishes . Keen to have some of his own desires fulfilled , Karva has the boy kidnapped . But he isn't sure of what would really bring him happiness . Is it the innocence of being a child again or is it another hand-job ? Either way , I don't want to see the little boy grant him the second . It just takes ages to get going and there are loads of repetitive scenes . The ending tries to be shocking but since there's hardly any back-story on investment in any of these characters it only serves as a release for the bored audience . Writer Tony Grisoni , a favourite of Terry Gilliam , tries to blend in some kind of religious allegory which ends up being pretentious as all hell , ironically . If he gave us something more accessible or at least had better explanations for the characters suddenly acting all weird then it would have been a more enjoyable film . As it is , we are introduced to a bunch of annoying loudmouths who then miraculously seem to develop intelligence when confronted by the mysterious boy . Who's origins are never revealed . That's just plain irritating ! Aside from sporadic moments of atmosphere and a moody score , this film has little to recommend .
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564,197 | 102,816 | 466,009 | 4 |
Yaaaaaaawn !
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I would say that video games don't come much simpler than this bore but the likes of Pong and Pac-Man , while less technically sophisticated are still better . Golden Axe 2 is such a chore to play with no fun or enjoyment injected into the proceedings whatsoever . Again , you can choose from barbarian Ax Battler , amazonian Tyris Flare or dwarf Gillius Thunderhead as you slowly plod your way through a generic as hell fantasy kingdom , hacking and slashing at conveyor belt enemies ( who sometimes kill themselves out of sheer stupidity ) before you get to the big guy in a suit of armour who has taken over the land because of his evilness or whatever nonsense . I often associate Golden Axe with Streets of Rage since the gameplay in the first games was very similar ( I also bought them on the same day back in March 1993 ) . But while the SOR series only got better and more sophisticated I am afraid that Golden Axe just got crapper . It tries to be the gaming equivalent of a big budget Conan movie but comes off as no more than a Roger Corman mini-series . You've never played a game so stripped down and bland as this . Graphics Sound Gameplay Lasting Appeal FPros : It's a lot like Golden AxeCons : It's a LOT like Golden AxeSound effects are no more than white noise . Baddies all look the same . No point system . Very , very little in the way of power ups . No combo moves . Collision detection is poor . Music is just ghastly .
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564,704 | 102,816 | 161,977 | 4 |
Atmospheric , but extremely boring .
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Simon Magus is a weirdo living in some peasant country shire who every hates because he talks to the devil and plants . He's Jewish but isn't allowed to be a proper Jew because he's weird . So he tries to be a Christian , which the local priests are happy to help with since it will deplete the Jewish manpower , thus giving them more muscle in the future trading of the village once a new railway station is built . Are you bored already listening to this ? Imagine having to suffer through the whole film . The only good thing Simon Magus has going for it is the wonderful widescreen photography and lovely English countryside locations . Other than that you'll be needing caffeine pills to stay awake during the boredom . It seems like an ' epic ' student film with lofty ambitions but there's a massive amateurish feel to it . The sound design just doesn't seem right and some of the editing looks like it's been done on a home computer . Actors like Iain Holme and Rutger Hauer come and go with no real effect on the film or the viewer . Both of them look thoroughly bored and wish to vacate the premises immediately . I wouldn't bother with this film , it has nothing to offer apart from pretty scenery . And you can go out for a drive in your car if you want that .
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564,810 | 102,816 | 58,472 | 4 |
One Cool Cat
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The Pink Panther is cool as cool can be . And so funny and cute . In this cartoon he observes some little dude painting a house blue . Preferring Pink to Blue he goes about sabotaging the painter's work . Every where the painter paints in blue , the Panther paints in Pink . Sounds simple and not funny , but it's hilarious . The Pink Panther cannot be outsmarted , he's just always way ahead of the game and in the end he inevitably wins and claims the now pink house for himself . And why not ? Though only 40 years old and not really as well established as the Looney Tunes cartoons The Pink Panther is surely one of THE classic animated characters .
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564,036 | 102,816 | 115,759 | 4 |
More Holes Than A Truckload Of Old Socks
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Imagine a nuclear apocalypse movie from hardcore Asian director John Woo , written by the guy who wrote Speed and Hard Rain / creator of TV's Boomtown and starring John Travolta as the villain . Does it sound good ? It might have looked good on paper but as a film it's a complete and utter disaster . The problem is the uninspired story is full of zillions of holes , Travolta's campy performance , Woo's direction is almost entirely muted ( it's practically a generic action film ) and slow , plodding story . It's supposed to be fast paced , going from one climax / hair's breadth escape to the other , but it's padded out with dozens of ' helicopters just flying around ' scenes . And what is the point in a muted John Woo movie ? Even in the highly censored ( and still superior Hard Target ) his style was still prominent and in your face . It leads me to believe that maybe Broken Arrow has had some violence and action taken out . But from the looks of the film all that is missing is story . Broken Arrow is worse than brainless . There are so many errors and mistakes in the plot that you'll be hard pushed to find a more illogical and nonsensical movie ( Ballistic : Ecks vs Sever not included ) . Plus , like in Woo's Face Off , Travolta seems to be under the impression that no matter what he does it's automatically cool and hip . He doesn't even try to get into the character of Vic Deakins or bring him to life or give him a new dimension . I mean Deakins is , without a doubt , a weirdo who has seriously lost his mind . If some other actor had gotten this role ( Johnny Depp , or even John Lithgow would have been a far better choice ) then the movie would have risen a little . Sadly tho , we just don't click with Deakins or feel sorry for him or even side with him . This particular villain could have provoked so much out of us , especially with Woo's trademark melodrama , but Travolta just goes campy all the way . Not cool ! Christian Slater is simply okay as the hero and the gorgeous Samantha Mathis doesn't have much to do other than stand around looking distressed and pretty . They make for a cute couple tho , especially if you liked them in Pump Up The Volume . And how many helicopters did they blow up in this film ? It seems as if a helicopter blows up every five minutes . It really becomes so dull and repetitive . Boom ! An explosion ! Wow ? The A-Team did better explosions than this . What so interesting about the zillionth ball of flame rising into the air ? The only cool thing about the movie is what saves it from a 1-star review ; Hans Zimmer's awesome , highly exciting and atmospheric score . The score carries the movie . Without it Broken Arrow would be no more than Broken Movie . If you want a countryside based / railroad / nuclear actioner then check out Under Siege 2 . with the exception of Seagal's acting , it's vastly superior to this on all levels . The DVD isn't even anamorphic so if you have widescreen TV then the Region 2 DVD is the way to go . The Dolby 5 . 1 sound is great but a DTS track would have been better . The menu screens have a ' Special Features ' option but it only contains a trailer ( and not even the good trailer ) . So much for the features !
|
564,269 | 102,816 | 490,198 | 4 |
Both incarnations are nothing more than average .
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I had the Predator 2 video game on the Commodore 64 . The graphics were horrible , but the side-scrolling first-person shooter gameplay was involving if far inferior to the likes of Operation Wolf . I never made it to the end . The Sega Genesis version is an isometric platformer that has almost nothing to do with the film . Once again you play as Mike Harrigan , Danny Glover's character in the film , and you run about killing drug dealers and rescuing hostages . It's only 4 levels long and it gets very boring very quickly . Plus , it's quite easy . To charge £39 . 99 for a game like this back in the day is robbery . Only serious fans of the film should bother to check out these games . If the Genesis had been an upgraded version of the Commodore 64 approach to the game then it would have been much better . As it is , both games are tepid and inoffensively average .
|
564,167 | 102,816 | 203,701 | 4 |
I never really liked this much
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I know this is going to sound like sacrilege but I was never a fan of the Mortal Kombat games . Having played Street Fighter and Fatal fury before it I just didn't see much point in another fighting franchise . Plus , the digitised graphics , which were supposed to be ' groundbreaking ' and make us all go ' ooohhh , ahhh ' were just really rubbish . They were so blocky and resembled just a few big , chunky pixels vaguely in the shape of a human . I tired of it pretty quickly I'm afraid to say but a few months after I stopped playing it I went back after finding cheat codes in a magazine to restore the censored gore . But even that was dumb ! A gallon of blood splattered into the air every time you punched someone and it just looked so stupid that it had no edge . And then later on I got the cheats for the finishing movies and ' babalities ' and ' animalities ' or whatever such nonsense . But by that point they just took it too far and I never went back to it again . And the sequels never took my interest either . Not the best fighting game by far . Graphics C Sound C Gameplay C Lasting Appeal
|
564,669 | 102,816 | 469,232 | 4 |
REALLY simple platformer
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This game was pretty much the simplest kind you could ever get . You played a small alien dude with a big round helmet on a strange planet . The object of each level was to jump onto a platform that was moving back and forth . Then onto another one , moving slightly faster . And so on and so on . Ten platforms , ten levels . That was it . That's not to say it wasn't kinda cute and it did have the slightest re-playability . I have no idea what ' Zub ' actually meant but in the instructions it stood for a variety of words . It's also the first word that my then 3-year-old cousin managed to read . If you come across an emulator for this very , very basic game then I still recommend you give it a quick go . Graphics Sound Gameplay Lasting Appeal
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564,078 | 102,816 | 417,148 | 4 |
More Zzzzz than Sssss
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I was quite looking forward to this film as I enjoyed David R . Ellis ' previous film Cellular and the poster and idea for Snakes on a Plane is just pure high-concept trash . I could have been great , but I was surprisingly bored through-out . I do like popcorn movies , but the popcorn has to taste good and this bucket just has far too much venom in it for me . After Final Destination 2 and Cellular , David R . Ellis seems to be New Line Cinema's king of B-movies . Since the departure of Ronny Yu from this project , he seemed like the most logical choice . And while he does use some innovative ideas ( such as the pretty cool ' snake vision ' ) the film is too darkly shot and edited like a blur . I don't find death to be funny and expected a stronger ' man vs nature ' subtext to it . What we get is a man being bitten on the penis and stoners bitten while joining the Mile High Club . And the sudden , stinging attacks never seem to frighten . The first few kills are crass and exploitative and it spoils the mood for the rest of the film . I know I am being ridiculous criticising a no-brainer film such as this in such a way but even low-grade B-movies like Anaconda and it's sequel managed to be more scary and exciting than this . The characters are set-up in the typical horror film way and it's obvious which ones are going to die one by one . And while their deaths appear to violent , you never REALLY see anything shocking . A film with such an eccentric title really should have gone to crazy , far-fetched extremities and delivered loads of gore . But it never truly seems like it does . The majority of the film seems taped together from various different writers ideas and some scenes definitely feel tacked on after principal photography . Films set on panic-stricken planes are abundant ( Exec Dec , Passenger 57 , United 93 , Con Air , Die Hard 2 ) and scenes of crash landings and decompression are nothing new to audiences . The presence of Snakes doesn't make it much different . Plus , Trevor Rabin's score is total crap . Plain and simple . Uninspired , generic rubbish completely without theme , melody , excitement our even coherence in it's endless bombasticness . I had great hopes for him when he did such brilliant work ( actually co-composing ) on Con Air and Armageddon , but he's fast proving to be talentless . Samuel L . Jackson is brilliant as always and the under-rated Julianna Margulies is quite bloody gorgeous , more so than more popular Hollywood actresses . Lin Shaye ( a popular New Line actress , since her husband runs the studio ) has more to do than usual in the role of a heroic stewardess and those of you who like her more comedic roles will find this a welcome change . Though there's not much else I can recommend . After all the internet-nerd hype surrounding this film , it fails to live up to potential and expectations . Quite a disappointment !
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