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563,787 | 102,816 | 42,682 | 5 |
Little Ducker
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Tom , living on a farm now ( owned by Old MacDonald if the music is anything to go by ) , swipes a newly laid egg from a duck's nest and proceeds to cook it . The little duckling obviously doesn't want to be eaten so he flees to Jerry's dwellings within the voids where they team up to thwart Tom . Yes , it is EXACTLY the same set-up as the previous short Hatch-Up Your Troubles , even to the extent of having the little bird peck through things and shout ' Mama ' . I am so sick of these ' cute ' little characters brought in to partner with Jerry . It's the same thing every time , right down to them smiling and walking off into the sunset as the cartoon irises out . A couple of good gags make up for it , but the duck is incredibly annoying .
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564,490 | 102,816 | 362,120 | 5 |
No better , no worse
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Spoofs are old hat . They are outdated and there's no real point to them anymore . Modern audiences are FAR more cynical than they used to be and can easily pick up on a movie's foibles . We don't need stuff like this to remind us how naff some films can be . The Scary Movie franchise seems to be in the uncomfortable groove of releasing a new instalment every 2 years . Now we're onto the fourth ( and final chapter of the trilogy ) and the movies that Zucker and co are choosing to lampoon are already confined to the trash-bin of history . Thus rendering the film mostly purposeless . Aside from War of the Worlds , Scary Movie 4 rips to shreds The Village and The Grudge , two horror films that were so downright awful that they don't need a spoof to point out how stupid they were . And generic horror films come and go with such abundance these days that no one really gives a damn about either of these two anymore . Another thing I hate about spoofs ( or at least this kind of spoof ) is that they always ungracefully grab as many films as they can , mash them together and cook up some moronic plot as a way of stringing a bunch of simple-minded sketches together . When people are given the job / chore of directing a movie they should keep in mind that they are being given the chance to be really creative . And if they churn out something as mass-produced and common as the stuff they're meant to be making fun of then allow me to laugh out loud at the irony . Scary Movie 4 IS funny . But it's half enjoyable , half total , pointless crap . There are some great digs at Tom Cruise ( who I am sick of the sight of ) and Michael Jackson . But why the hell are they spoofing Million Dollar Baby and Brokeback Mountain when they're no even horror films ? And why is King Kong on the poster when he's not even in the bloody movie ? It's no better and no worse than the other Scary Movies . But it's a low-aiming series that only really appeals to the lowest common denominator . David Zucker has proved himself to be a good comedy director with Baseketball and Rat Race . This is truly beneath him , though that won't stop the masses from lapping it up .
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564,585 | 102,816 | 362,227 | 5 |
Mild , meaningless film
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Steven Spielberg used to tackle massive movies that were huge blockbusters and instant classics . Think Jaws , Indiana Jones , Jurassic Park , Schindler's List , Saving Private Ryan . Now he's busy with ' who cares ? ' little movies with little stories and little meaning . Catch Me If You Can and The Terminal are perfect examples of this . What has happened to Spielberg ? Why is he wasting time on easily forgotten stuff like this and not concentrating his efforts on something bigger and better . Tom Hanks is great as Victory Navorsky , the traveler from Eastern Europe who is stranded in JFK airport after war breaks out in his country . He is not allowed to leave the terminal so he settles down in an abandoned departure gate and makes a temporary home for himself . In between mild scenes of mild drama some colorful characters pop up for some mild involvement . The least of which is lecherous Catherine Zeta-Jones as Flight Attendant with no clue who ends up being a complete waste of time . It's not so hard to believe why Dodgeball beat this to the number 1 spot this past summer . Both movies are instantly forgettable but The Terminal doesn't have much of an audience outside of pensioners ( I was the only person under 60 when I went to see , in an almost empty cinema ) . With Catch Me If You Can , Steven Spielberg certainly proved he can do simple , non-epic movies . But he also proved that 12 years earlier with Always . Did we really need another one ? The only thing worthwhile in the Terminal is John Williams ' warm musical score . Which is mild rather than magical .
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563,850 | 102,816 | 82,763 | 5 |
Just . . . weird
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I never really got into this movie , it's more strange than it is funny . And Chevy wasn't his usual self either , he was way to morose and distant to really side with his character or empathise with him in any way . Chevy plays Max Fielder , an air-traffic controller who's life is constantly in the toilet and bad luck follows him everywhere . He's very paranoid and possessive over his girlfriend , so much so that she dumps him for some total dork . On his way home from a disastrous night out his car is sprayed with radioactive gunk from a leaky government truck . He is soon blessed / cursed with telekinetic abilities , which he uses to get revenge on those who make his life miserable . It could have been really fun but it's just . . . weird . Ken Shapiro ( who ? ) does not have the same edge in his direction as Harold Ramis , Michael Ritchie or John Landis and he doesn't know how to fully use Chevy's brand of humor . There are some laughs to be had though , but their not so memorable . The DVD is in 1 . 85 : 1 anamorphic widescreen but it's mostly all shot in soft focus so there's nothing outstanding here . The sound is plain old Mono and it's alright if nothing else , though the dialogue has very heavy use of ADR . A trailer and TV spot are included . Oh . . . and that theme song playing over the menu , opening and closing credits ? Yuck !
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563,887 | 102,816 | 483,020 | 5 |
Fun for a few minutes but gets too hard .
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Joe Blade was a rather fun game in which you searched all over this military compound looking for hostages . As a side-scrolling shooter it wasn't that violent as you only ever encountered a bad guy once in a while . Bizarrely , when you shot them they instantly became a pile of skull and bones that looked like a small white chicken to me . But I was about 8 when I played it . But a few minutes in ( you had exactly 30 minutes and counting to complete it ) the game got so difficult that I never got any further . I'm talking about the bomb you had to defuse by breaking some kind of code . It was impossible and you only got sixty seconds to do it in . If it weren't for that I'm sure I would have played Joe Blade for much longer . The Commodore Amiga version had much , much better graphics btw . Graphics Sound Gameplay C Lasting Appeal
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564,554 | 102,816 | 278,820 | 5 |
Ew !
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For the love of God , don't watch this while eating dinner . I made that fatal mistake . It's not a pleasant cartoon , it's a nasty little public service announcement warning of the dangers of mosquito breeding in your back yard . If you're quite squeamish when it comes to bugs ( as I am ) it'll make you completely paranoid . The horrid detail it goes into , especially the cross section close-ups of a mosquito biting some guy , really give you the heebie-jeebies . A good thing the Seven Dwarfs are so obsessed with cleaning up and totally eliminate every possible mosquito breeding ground from their home . According to this short they can breed almost anywhere . Needless to say , I cleaned my kitchen and bathroom right after watching this , while struggling to keep my dinner down .
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564,852 | 102,816 | 467,420 | 5 |
Not worth the effort
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A review of the Sega Genesis version . The only difference between this game and the original Outrun is that this is dull and very boring . I wonder why Sega even bothered making it because it's certainly not worth owning if you have played the first . The graphics in the arcade version are fine but on the Genesis they are even sparser than before . The handling is terrible . The music bland ( where is Magical Sound Shower ? ) and you cannot choose which way you want to go at the end of each stage , the whole game is stuck on a set course . At the end of every five stages you can choose upgrades for the car that include Hi-Grip Tires , Super Engine and Faster Turbo and no more . While I have no doubt that this would have made a difference in the arcade the Genesis version offers very little advantage to upgrading with these features . And since there are only 3 of them , by the beginning of the 5th race your car will always end up the same way , so there's no REAL customization to it at all . I was very disappointed with this game . Even the Commodore 64 version that I owned way back in 1989 was better simply because it has Magical Sound Shower included . Do not bother with this game . Graphics D Sound D Gameplay D Lasting Appeal
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564,127 | 102,816 | 482,604 | 5 |
Generic shooter
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In fact , ' generic ' is too fancy a word for this game . It tries to attempt the same sort of atmosphere seen in the recent film Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow , with Jules Verne-type technology in a 19th century setting . But it's so dull and uninteresting . You have the choice of playing as biplane or a blimp ( hardly the best kind of combat vehicle ) as you fly through several slightly atmospheric stages blasting at generic enemies and catching generic power-ups . There's almost no skill involved in it at all . And the music is some of the most boring I've ever encountered in a video-game . I can't think of anything to recommend this game . The Gameboy Advance version features slightly improved graphics and altered cut scenes , but would still never ever consider paying full price for this . If you're desperately keen then pay less than half price for the GBA version if you can and ignore the Sega release . Graphics Sound Gameplay Lasting Appeal
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563,945 | 102,816 | 450,232 | 5 |
Predictable and clichéd , but mildly entertaining
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16 Blocks is the kind of movie you can really only watch once and even at that you'll be correctly guessing what happens next as it goes through loads of familiar developments with a lot of unsubtle foreshadowing . I'm surprised that Richard Donner managed to make a film so tepid . The rapidly ageing Bruce Willis plays a downbeat , alcoholic cop who is talked into transporting a witness ( most definitely Mos Def ) to the courthouse to testify against dirty cops . Only those dirty cops make it very difficult for them to make this seemingly simple , short journey . Since the film runs 102 minutes and they have 118 minutes to get to the courthouse , it's not strictly in real time . But it did very much remind me of Phone Booth in terms of brisk pacing and bustling New York backdrop . A suspension of disbelief is seriously required as a few completely implausible things happen . I mean , how the hell do the dirty cops constantly manage to catch up with them . Do they have secret homing devices and teleport machines ? Why did Willis not shoot any of them in the foot so they couldn't follow ? Why didn't he identify himself properly on that bus full of complete moron passengers ? Richard Donner has proved himself a master of action in the past but this PG-13 rated movie is just packed full of jittery , blurred , badly-lit , incomprehensible shoot-outs . A harder nature and bad guys that DID more evil instead of talking about already doing it would have made a better movie . Rent this . And completely forget about it the minute you switch the DVD player off .
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563,773 | 102,816 | 411,159 | 5 |
Shockingly average Ben Dover production
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This was released around the time that VCA really got tired of Ben Dover's long set-up and lack of variety when it came to women . You can see why they dumped him from their label when watching this one . The DVD begins with Amy , a raven-haired and blue eyed South-African girl . Ben picks her up at the station and drives her to one of his many house . There she does the sex with Pascal which includes anal . It's slow and boring . The second scene stars Maja , an Egyptian girl at college in England who's inexplicably into porn . Which is very unusual considering the massive censorship and the laws / religion regarding porn in that country . She meets Ben in a hotel room and when Mario arrives the sex starts , anal is included . Maja , doesn't talk much but she's got a great body and it makes for a good scene . Third is Rebekah Jordan and Kinky , both of them get anal and DPs from Pascal and Mario . It's a good scene but not enough of the good stuff I'm afraid . Last is Navine . She meets up with Ben in a seedy studio and dances for him . Pascal and another nameless guy show up and she gets a DP . It's an okay scene but Navine really needs to shave .
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564,383 | 102,816 | 367,623 | 5 |
Nice to watch , but don't expect greatness
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Christmas Vacation 2 is nowhere near as classic as the original . But that doesn't mean it's not worth a few laughs . Just switch your brain off and enjoy an afternoon of stupidness . Cousin Eddie ( the ever lovable Randy Quaid ) is housesitting for Audrey ( the totally sexy Dana Barron ) during the Xmas holidays but loses his job at the Nuclear research plant to a chimp . Feeling down about how hopeless he is , Eddie is cheered up when the company offer his family and all expenses paid trip to Hawaii . So off they go ( uncle Nick and Audrey too ) for their dream Christmas Vacation . Obviously disaster is never too far away . This movie is basically pointless . The first was about Clark Griswald wishing to give his family the best Xmas ever . This ' un is just an excuse for a string of bad jokes with terrible comic timing . In this regard it's kinda similar to Vegas Vacation , the wit and sentiment of John Hughes is sorely missed . Quaid does his best , but there is a lot of not funniness to it . He deserves better material , Matty Simmons may have produced all the other Vacation movies but he hasn't a clue how to write a good script . Christmas Vacation 2 is to the original what Home Alone 4 was to Home Alone . Plus I have a few questions , which I am sure a lot of other people will be asking . Why does Audrey's plumbing go mental ? Why do Eddie's clothes stay impossibly white for the entire film ? Why is there an elephant on the island ? Plus there isn't that much of an Xmas feel to it . Sure the scenes in Chicago and quaint and snowy but a Hawaiian Island is hardly the best setting for a festive movie . However , Eddie does whistle and hum enough Xmas tunes to make up for it . But where the hell is the wonderful Christmas Vacation song ? Buy if you're a fan of the first . Rent if you're only curious . It's nice to see a great character such as Cousin Eddie given the center spotlight but I just wish he was given funnier stuff to do . The DVD is in above average 1 . 85 : 1 anamorphic widescreen with okay Dolby 2 . 0 surround that is mainly used for general ambiance but still sounds fine whenever required . A handful of trailers , a brief featurette and a commentary make up the extras .
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563,959 | 102,816 | 455,776 | 5 |
Sounds great , plays crap
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I find discovered Soul Star through a free soundtrack CD given away on the front of a magazine ( which I nicked from the store while on lunch break from high school ) way back in spring 1994 . The music to Soul Star is GREAT ! And I really wanted to play the game . I never got a Sega CD until over a year later and the wait was not worth it . As a 3D space-shooter , Soul Star was pretty rotten . There was no targeting system and the weapons available were rubbish . The graphics were alright and slightly atmospheric but not up to the superior standards of the Sega CD , it was all Genesis quality . Apart from that brilliant soundtrack , which is the only reason to get the game as the CD doubled as a score CD if you popped it in your player . Aside from a couple of interesting cut-scenes there was no other reason to play this game . A real disappointment . Graphics Sound ( effects are crap but music is awesome ) Gameplay Lasting Appeal
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564,049 | 102,816 | 407,887 | 5 |
Better than Infernal Affairs , but still more of a mess than it is a masterwork .
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Unfortunately there are millions of people out there who will watched this movie with a positive bias as most believe that Martin Scorsese is utterly infallible , but I am strictly in the middle with this director . I know I am going to be totally controversial ( and perhaps SHOCKING ) when I admit that I really hated Goodfellas . Now , before you immediately vote against my review , just please read on so I can explain myself . I find Goodfellas to be one of the most ridiculously over-rated movies in history ( along with DePalma's phenomenally misinterpreted pile of crap Scarface ) but I do LOVE Casino . They are almost two sides of the same coin , so you can see how I am split over Scorsese . I saw the original Infernal Affairs a few years ago and I hated it too . Yes , some good moments , but mainly an over-wrought bore . It's not because it is an Asian film , as I often enjoy them , but I just found it to be slightly inaccessible and alienating . Scorsese's remake is easier to identify with but is also a whole 50 minutes longer . The plot has undercover cop Leo Dicaprio infiltrate the Boston Irish Mafia in order to flush out a mole in the Police Department . Matt Damon is that mole and his job is to flush out the undercover cop in the Mafia . Martin Sheen , Mark Wahlberg and Jack Nicolson play the respective bosses , lawful and lawless . Within this set-up characters bounce back and forth off each other , swearing , shooting , swearing and swearing . Man , this film is effing hardcore ! ( Sarcasm ! ) Asking Jack Nicolson to play evil is like asking a Rottwieler to bark . It's what he does best . ' Ooh , but what about all the subtle nuances ? ' Come on , it's an easy , easy performance for someone like him and it's nothing you ain't seen him do before . The best performance actually comes from Matt Damon , closely followed by Mark Wahlberg ( if you ever had trouble telling the difference between them then don't see this movie ) . The cinematography is ugly as sin . Scorsese has gone for the same dull as hell color pallet of brown , brown and dark brown he used in Goodfellas . Yes , I know this film is not supposed to be bright , happy colors and blue skies . But if the dank colors are supposed to reflect the gritty realism of the doomed plot threads then they totally contradict the perfectly set-up camera angles . I am not saying that this film could only have been shot in a Paul Greengrass style jitter but a little less and a little more of the former and latter could have set the balance straight . And the plot is completely all over the place . If you get into this movie you'll walk out of the cinema shocked and astonished , which will make you forget about some things that simply don't add up . Since I had already seen Infernal Affairs I didn't gasp at the ending when the rest of the audience sucked the air out of the cinema . I was too busy trying to make sense of it all , but you can't because there are too many holes in it . Remakes are becoming more and more common these days and they are increasingly scoffed at ( even when they are really good , such as Dawn of the Dead 2004 or Poseidon ) but as soon as apparently unimperfect Martin Scorsese does one most of you turn a blind eye to the fact that the film is near-enough a shot-for-shot remake itself . I don't think it took a great amount of talent to crank out a film like this . And where the hell the $90 million budget went to is the REAL mystery ! But lads will love it . The screening I went to was sold out to many groups of 10 or 15 guys and metrosexuals with their blonde girlfriends . I am mentioning this because The Departed ( like 2004's Crash ) is a film that philistines go to see because it makes them feel clever . Sort of like penance for watching crud like When a Stranger Calls or The Fog . I just wish that people would find THEIR OWN good movies instead of always choosing what everyone else likes . Which is the only reason I can give for Goodfellas being so mysteriously well-regarded . Martin Scorsese is not the Mafia expert he thinks he is . Boston is not his turf . It's not a world I think he understands . And the result is a cartoonish , exaggerated shoot-em-up in which every character is lined up for the sole purpose of eventually being gunned down .
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564,776 | 102,816 | 158,958 | 5 |
Not much to do .
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All you really do in this game is look around Springfield and run into the occasional character . I finished the entire thing in less than 2 hours . Plus it is not very vivid or deep . You can only visit 2 classrooms in the Springfield elementary school , there is only 1 angle of Moe's bar etc . All you really do is LOOK at these locations that we are already familiar with and have the tiniest little bit of interaction with them . Plus the geography of Springfield in this game is not the same as the TV show . Which is also inconsistent in it's placing of many " sets " . Moe's Bar has been in many different places for example . But , then again , in the HOMER BECOMES a garbageman episode , the town was moved to another site . Perhaps this is where it got all shuffled up . There are a few little ( and I mean little ) games included . One of the main games is to simply find hidden baseball cards . A ploy to trick into clicking on the screen and revealing slight animation . In total there is just under 25 minutes worth of animation here and it is cool that the original cast provided the voices . But unless you are a Die Hard Simpsons fan then I would leave this game be . Definitely only for younger kids .
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564,354 | 102,816 | 99,423 | 5 |
Surprisingly weak
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The first , and worst , sequel to Die Hard , is terrorised by the same plot as the original . While waiting for his wife's plane to arrive at Dulles Airport ( on Xmas Eve ) , McClane notices a few suspicious exchanges between a group of men amidst the busy yuletide passengers . Before you know he is neck deep in trouble with an army of mercenaries , led by Colonel Stewart ( William Sadler ) , who are hell-bent on setting free a corrupt South American General / Drug Baron ( Franco Nero ) . There are more bad guys than before . And more suspension of disbelief is required . There are so many plot holes and illogical moments that the film almost drowns in its own absurdity . But there is enough action and stunts to cancel it out and distract our attention . Though they not presented in a breathtaking or memorable way . It's all too generic and a bit mean-spirited . No audience nowadays would be satisfied with it so prepare yourself for 80's violence . William Sadler and Franco Nero lack the callous efficiency of Alan Rickman . And a hero can only be measured by his nemesis . But most of the time McClane is just capping off nameless mercs . How boring . Tho this should not be blamed on Sadler , he has a threatening and intense presence and as he has proved himself in movies like Trespass and Demon Knight . Too bad his character here is so badly written and underdeveloped . I'm sorry but blowing up 250 people off-screen to show how evil you are just won't cut it . This was Renny Harlin's second movie of 1990 ( the other was Ford Fairlain ) and it is without a doubt the movie that made him a certified action director . It was a tough , and huge , movie to pull off . He just pulled it off with no particular charm . Though he does a wonderful job of capturing the look and feel of an East Coast winter . The wide-open snowfields and ice-covered runways will definitely make you feel chilly . Although this is another problem . The first Die Hard worked entirely within the space of Nakatomi Plaza . It was claustrophobic and almost plausible . The scale and scope of Die Hard 2 is too big for its own good . Similar to theproblems of ID4 , the staples of reality are ripped out with ignorance and over-confidence . The bulk of the film is nothing but one dumb action scene after another . It doesn't make for coherent viewing . Die Hard 2 is a definite lag in between both of McTiernan's very strong outings . By today's standards it seems dated and very 90's . Which is a shame considering the original and ' With A Vengeance ' are , in a way , ' timeless ' . It's movies like this that inspired ' Last Action Hero ' . Filmed in Panavision , the 2 . 35 : 1 anamorphic picture is superb looking with true blacks ( a lot of this film is set at night ) and nice fleshtones . Fire effects and colors look beautifully orange and overall the quality is top notch aside from a few instances of minor pixelation . The gunshots are loud and ferocious in both the Dolby Digital and DTS tracks . All explosions and every punch and kick are rendered with amazing clarity . Some of the surrounds tend to stick to mono but the plane crash in the middle of the movie will convince it is actually happening in your living room . Dialogue scenes tend to stick to the front speaker and the musical score by Michael Kamen is well recorded and is sure to excite . Renny Harlin's commentary is much more interesting that John McTiernan's fatigued and labored effort on the first movie . Harlin talks about the characters more and how he prefers his movies to be in terms of motivation and why characters should smoke only if it is necessary . Among other things . Such as how many of the effects he did then , in many different ways , would be so much quicker and easier to do today in Digital CGI . The Featurette was made for Fox TV back in 1990 and it is a bit better than the usual , self-congratulatory nonsense that bogs down most featurettes . But it still can't resist talking about how ' great ' the movie is . Tho thanks to this extra we now know that most of the snow in the movie is shredded soap . A second , 4-minute , Featurette is basically an extended trailer . There are a few deleted scenes that are not that interesting and it's easy to see why they were cut from the film . Although the alternate scene on how McClane gets to the Annex Skywalk ( The Boiler Room ) is quite cool . The interview with Renny Harlin and the Villain's Profile are promotional titbits in which they discuss how to direct a high-concept sequel and how to be an evil bad guy . Behind the scenes and storyboards focuses on 2 scenes . The first is ' Breaking the Ice ' and the second is ' Chaos on the Conveyor Belt ' . The storyboard and film comparison is for the ' Skywalk Ambush ' sequence . Visual effects breakdowns explore , in great length and tedious , repetitive slo-mo , the Ejector seat scene and the Airport Runway . These are basically green-screen evolutions . The other model effects scenes broken down are ' Chopper ' , ' Airplane Models ' and ' Wing Fight ' .
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564,576 | 102,816 | 370,263 | 5 |
Weak , weak , incredibly weak .
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In fact AVP is weaker than a 10x recycled tea bag . You get my point . . . it's a very weak film . What else could be expected from Paul ' It's not my fault ' Anderson ? A man who is forever blaming studio interference for the poor quality of his films . What on earth Fox , Walter Hill and John Davis were thinking in hiring this hack I'm not sure I want to know . Trust me , no matter how naive and simple your film-going pleasures are , you will walk away from AVP forever jaded and cynical . Both franchises are best examples of their genre . Alien-Utterly faultless Aliens-Breathtaking hardcore sci-fi action Predator-Just so brilliant words fail to describe it Predator 2-Underrated sequel that plays like a story taken directly from a 1950 Tales from the Crypt comic-book . Alien 3-Notorious failure but far superior to AVP . Alien Resurrection-Very strange but intriguing weirdo sequel with some wonderfully unique touches . And now . . . AVP : Alien vs Predator-Watered down , childish , repetitive , boring , completely flat , soulless and castrated . Paul Anderson simply has no idea where the heart of either franchises is . He directs the film with arrogance and over-confidence . Undeniable proof of this is obvious in the scene where Sebastian says ' It's all beginning to make sense now . ' I'm sorry , the sense must have been lost and me and the rest of the audience . Having seen AVP in the cinema twice now I must stress to you that the film does NOT hold up in repeat viewings . After being surprised at how ' not too bad ' it was the first time , the rotten dialogue , endless exposition , slow set-up and lack of actual Alien vs Predator fighting damn this film to hell . Much like the main faults of last years Freddy vs Jason , though at least that film was a hard R-rated movie and not a kids movie . For a crossover franchise that has existed for over 14 years throughout many different forms of media , the AVP movie should have been an epic directed by someone with talent . Instead Anderson craps all over the source material and directs the worst film of his toilet dwelling career . AVP plays like a bunch of cut-scenes from the video games and totally devoid of any originality . In one particular scene he blatantly and obviously rips off a narrative from HP Lovecrafts At The Mountains Of Madness . The nerve ! There are plot holes all over the place and massive gaps in logic . Like why does the acid blood conveniently only corrode weapons the Predator doesn't really need ? And why oh why do they hunt in Antartica ? The are drawn to earth areas of heat and conflict . Just as horror movies are desperate to come up with new , better reasons to make the use of cell phones not available to the dying one-by-one characters , AVP uses the most asinine reason to isolate the cast so no one can help . Get your head around this monstrosity . . . the Predators hunt Aliens in a pyramid 2000 feet below the ice on a remote island in Antartica . WHAT ? ! ? ! ? ! ? ! ? ! ? ! ? ! ? ! ? ! Of course they do . And the next Robocop movie is set in a volcano below Vietnam . Honestly , it is the most ridiculous story ever concocted . How dare they release this gibberish upon an audience who , for a long time , deserve better . Despite the utterly moronic plot and pathetic characters , the film does do a decent job of tying both creatures together . Such as the Predator's fondness for triangles and multiples of ten . The Weyland-Yutani corporation's initial interest in the species . And the presence of Lance Henrikson , as Bishop's creator and the only cast member with credibility . The Predators get very little screen time ( much of the film's meagre 101 minute running time-14 minutes of credits-is devoted to wandering around dark corridors . . . how astonishingly new ) and when they do show up they are total wimps . Though the main one is a bit harder , he's a bit too humanized at the end . His facial expressions are very , very cool however . One cannot help how much better this film could have been . Even with the awful Anderson at the helm , if Alan Silvestri's scores and themes from the Predator movies had been kept then the tame action scenes would have soared . As it is , Harald Kloser's score to the movie is generic and unengaging . Yet another missed opportunity . The ending hints at a sequel . If it's anything like this count me out .
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563,851 | 102,816 | 433,090 | 5 |
Cute and colorful but too childish
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From a graphics point of view this game is very impressive . Sadly from a gameplay angle it's kind of limited and every level is basically the same thing . This could basically be described as a side-scrolling beat-em-up , though the uncontrollable camera POV becomes very annoying . And compared with old-school games of the same genre , it doesn't hold up . Pow , biff , bam , smack ! It just goes on and on for the whole game . There are some levels that could have been cool , like the rooftop or subway stages . How cool would it have been to chuck the bad guys off the roof or onto the subway tracks ? Very , but an invisible wall prevents this from happening . It's so disappointed that a lot of exploration is cut short . In the subway level trains rocket past in the tunnels on either side of you , but in the middle tunnel ( where you battle loads of bad guys ) there's no trains at all . Most levels are this way , there's just no REAL interaction with the environment . The Streets of Rage games on the Genesis were better . It's the same thing . The city is overrun with thugs headed by a big boss . You beat them up and kill the boss . TMNT does not improve on this concept . Cute graphics though . It's also kind of easy . The game is totally aimed at kids . I've seen better , I've seen worse . But I would suggest renting the game as it's long-time appeal is drastically short .
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563,971 | 102,816 | 445,995 | 5 |
Starts off fun , ends up really , really boring .
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Unless you're a fan of the original Kingdom Hearts on the PS2 then I would probably stay away from this game . You'll be totally lost and confused and won't know who the hell any of the characters are aside from the recognizable Disney ones . Plus , they are all suffering from amnesia and their long , too frequent , cut-scenes have an enigmatic feel to them so you'll still not really ever be sure what is going on no matter how far you get into the game . I think the card-based strategy of fighting and evolving is a horrible , badly conceived misfire of an idea . This kind of thing may be fine in a Beyblade video-game but in a Disney / Final Fantasy game it's just inappropriate . The whole concept is scatterbrained and random and has no real skill involved . It takes ages to build up a decent combat deck and even when you do the fighting is endless , tedious and boring . You'll fight the same villains in every level and while in appearance the levels may look different ( taking their inspiration from many different Disney films ) they are essentially all the same . The fun comes from spotting popular Disney characters and trying to get into the story that involves them . But the plot is so incomprehensible and alienating that I just didn't care after a while . I did stick with the game for a good few months and found advancing through each level to be an exhilarating and thankless chore . Nothing changed and I never really felt like I was getting anywhere . I've played better RPGs than this and so have you . As RPGs on the GBA go , I've yet to see one that truly works . Skip this unless you're a die-hard fan of either franchise . Graphics A Sound C Gameplay Lasting Appeal
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564,390 | 102,816 | 34,398 | 5 |
Barely interesting cheap-ass monster flick .
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There's something I find enchanting about the old monster movies and their gloomy castle settings and spooky countrysides . The Wolf Man does have a small amount of both but it's the only thing that kept me watching . The ludicrous , utterly nonsensical story suffers the same burden as many of these quickie black and white productions in the fact that it spends a lot of time setting up character and plot only for it to go nowhere in an abrupt finale . It's like they knew that they couldn't film any decent set-pieces or exciting scenes because there just wasn't any money so they just made a 60-minute soap opera with a 10-minute wash-out ending . Set in what is apparently England , accents are all over the place from snooty British to casual Californian . The action seems to revolve around just three different sets which include an antiques shop , a castle and a forest that is so obviously a studio set with a smoke machine running off-camera to hide the flat floor . Some nice moments of atmosphere , mainly in dark shadowy sets , are the only thing that kept me watching this hopelessly dated timewaster .
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564,399 | 102,816 | 241,073 | 6 |
Brilliantly shot .
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But still falls short in providing a coherent storyline . I have no doubt that this film is more intelligible to those who speak Korean but I was a bit lost at times and couldn't keep up with all the characters . The story is about the angry ghost of a dead student at an all-girl school who periodically turns up in the guise of someone new . . . or something . Like I said , it's hard to follow . But the eerie photography and reliance on practical scares make it worthwhile . Far too many horror films these days are too slick and well-polished for their own good . Whispering Corridors features a certain rawness in it's grainy film stock and editing that gives the film a rather unique atmosphere . The gore isn't terribly excessive , nor is the film extreme in any way . But if you're in need of something different and with a weird edge to it then go for Whispering Corridors . Try hard to keep up though .
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564,478 | 102,816 | 78,187 | 6 |
Certainly no Castle of Cagliostro
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Oh , what a huge difference a director makes . Where Castle of Cagliostro had atmosphere , inventive visuals , coherence and plot Mystery of Mamo has blandness , cheap backgrounds , confusion and silliness . It IS good for a single viewing and features a couple of pretty good action scenes but , I'm afraid , beyond that it's just as forgettable as any other random Japanese cartoon . Lupin III has been cloned and killed and the ever highly-strung Inspector Zenigata rejoices but it turns out that some being from another dimension in the form of a dwarf freak and a huge disembodied brain is behind the whole charade and involves the real , living Lupin III in some cockamamie plot . Don't even think about trying to follow this tripe . There's no charm or appeal to Mystery of Mamo and while there's plenty of visual humor and the characters we love , they deserve a better film . Go watch Castle of Cagliostro instead .
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564,169 | 102,816 | 30,595 | 6 |
Hungry as Duck
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Donald and Goofy are up in the arctic circle for some reason ( or it could be antarctic ) and are hunting walruses and penguin respectively , as they are both tired of eating beans . While I have no problem with a dog eating a walrus doesn't anyone else find it weird that I duck would eat a penguin ? Or ' roast chicken ' as Donald calls it . What's to stop Goofy from eating him with that logic ? Anyway neither of them succeed , as usual . But Goofy ends up in an ice cavern . flattened by icicles and Donald attempts to march a zillion penguins to their deaths but lets a little baby get in his way and bring about the inevitable doom . Fun nonetheless .
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564,362 | 102,816 | 105,104 | 6 |
Highly clichéd but still quite fun
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This film has nothing new to offer but is quite appealing . I can't decide whether Bruce Payne is hammy or believable as the villain . He plays Charles Rayne ( or the Rayne of terror ) a notorious airplane hijacker who is being transported to LA from Miami for trial . But as soon as his plane is in the air his band of nameless crooks ( including a crazily miscast Liz Hurley ) set him free . But not to worry because John Cutter ( Wesley Snipes ) is on board . And he just happens to be head of security for the airline . It's his job to round up the crooks and save the passengers from the evil intentions of Rayne . And he's only got 80 minutes to do it in . I'm not kidding . This movie is 84 minutes long . The credits roll at the 80-minute mark . Minus 2 minutes for the opening sequence and another 20 ( of tedious character building ) for the action to begin . You're left with a 60-minute slice of entertainment . It makes you wonder why they bothered . If Warner wanted to make a great hijack movie why did they bother with the Passenger 57 script ? It's too short and too clichéd . A couple of brief moments of action make it barely worthwhile , but watch on it TV . Don't rent it or buy the DVD .
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564,664 | 102,816 | 35,226 | 6 |
In love with pussy
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Tom is playing with Jerry ( not that Jerry is having fun ) by dropping him in a spherical glass vase and watching him struggle to climb out . When Mammy-Two-Shoes ( dubbed to be less-offensive in my version ) answers the door , Tom chucks Jerry into a filing cabinet under ' M ' and spies on what the big deal is . Mammy-Two-Shoes has agreed to look after a neighbor's kitty while they're gone for the day . It just so happens to be a female kitty that Tom falls instantly in love with . He tries everything to impress her , only for her to respond with a bewildered expression . Finally he pulls Jerry out of the filing cabinet in an attempt to show off the tricks they've practiced together . Jerry , not to pleased with this , turns the tables on Tom and makes an idiot out of him . And Jerry is the one who ends up getting the girl . Not too funny , but not too boring . Lacks bite .
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564,712 | 102,816 | 118,615 | 6 |
Snakes are a pain !
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It's not in every movie that John Voight gets to impress us with the size of his snake . And it's not often I make bad jokes like that . I apologize . In fact , when I saw this in the cinema , the audience was in fits of laughter at the very first sight of said beast . A National Geographic film crew travel down river to the deepest depths of the Amazon jungle in search of a mythical tribe of large-breasted naked women , or something . On the way , they pick up a hitchhiker whose boat has been wrecked in a storm . Big mistake ! The hitchhiker is Paul Sarone ( John Voight , hamming it up so heavy he's almost sponsored by Danish ) , hell-bent on capturing a 60-foot snake that's lurking in the water . The rest of the crew tries to stand up against him , but his sneer is obviously too scary to fight against . Ice Cube plays the typical homebody from South Central ; Jonathan Hyde is the typical English gent ; Jennifer Lopez is the typical tough babe ; Owen Wilson is a dufus , as always , and Kari Wuhrer - infinitely prettier than Lopez - provides a decent distraction from the hungry reptile . In the tradition of horror-in-the-jungle movies , the victims get knocked off , one by one . Sometimes the anaconda looks real and when it doesn't , the effects are iffy , indeed . The plot works up to a predictable climax , with a big bang , to satisfy the audience . It's hard to believe this film went straight to No . 1 at the US box office . It's simply awful , but has such a hey-ho charm and a who-gives-a-damn attitude that it makes for decent popcorn fare . The script is chockablock full of clichés and most of the laughs are unintentional . But entertainment is entertainment , nevertheless , and Anaconda provides enough of it . How can you refuse a movie that offers a POV shot of inside a snake's belly ? How on earth the producer managed to assemble the actors he did , when the characters are no more than snake fodder , is unreal . They're all capable of better things , that's for sure . If giant fakes - I mean , snakes - turn you on , then go for it . Otherwise , beware . This is a Z-movie with a B-movie cast .
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564,626 | 102,816 | 109,040 | 6 |
Funny , but lacking in plot
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This is the movie that really kick-started the careers of Jim Carrey and , to a lesser extent , Courteney Cox although it is Carrey who makes this movie all his own by his wild and energetic performance as a half-insane Pet Detective . In case you're wondering that's a detective who tracks down missing animals . Ace is a great character , with his wacky clothes , groovy swagger , wild hair ( LOVE that do ) and unpredictable behaviour . He's a page right out of Howlin ' Mad Murdock's biography . Courteney Cox plays a boss for the Miami Dolphins who hires Ace to find their missing cetacean mascot Snowflake . They can't play without having their mascot y ' know . It's paper thin and despite lasting about 85 minutes , it is stretched too far . What could have been a half decent plot soon descends into lame-brain juvenile humor as Ace does his class clown bit , offends many people and uncovers stupid and unfunny ' plot ' twists . Tom Shadyac tries his best to make the film look colorful and vivid and , for the most part , succeeds but sometimes the production design looks a bit shoddy and I have no idea who allowed Sean Young to be in this movie . She's a terrible actress and makes every scene damn painful to watch . However , she is quite a MILF these days . Not in this movie though . There are some funny scenes and easy to see why Carrey went on to become such a big star but compared to the rest of Carrey's career it's a bit of an insult to his talent . I prefer the sequel , even though Ace is a full blown lunatic in it and appears a tiny bit more normal and human in this one . A fun movie to watch once in a long while . Not something to rely on for never-ending appeal .
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564,765 | 102,816 | 1,087,900 | 6 |
Fun filler , nothing more than that
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Fans of RE 0 , 1 and 3 will no doubt get a kick out of this game . All of the key locations from these three entries get revisited and almost fully destructible in this rail-shooter . I ain't no fan of rail shooter games . They were fine back in the days of Operation Wolf but nowadays they remind me too much of those awfully dated ( and seemingly endless ) House of the Dead games . I was a little wearing when purchasing RE : TUC but I knew it would be far superior to the other zombie shooter . In between the rehashed levels you get to play as Wesker and find up what he was up to behind the scenes of the original games . If you unlock enough weapons and files you can also play a bonus level set in an industrial facility owned by Umbrella in the Russian snowy wastelands . Some levels take a lot of repeating until you get the right combination of weapons and perfect the timing but not to the point that you'll be chucking your remote at the wall . I am terrible at these kind of games and I still managed it . What disappointed me the most was the total lack of any kind of atmosphere . But it's not really that kind of game . RE : TUC is for those craving a dose of mindless violence rather than a problem-solving thinker . But when you unlock absolutely everything there ain't much reason to go back to the game . It's basically just something to keep the fans from starving until RE5 comes out , whenever that will be . One thing's for sure , it won't be on the Wii .
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564,077 | 102,816 | 160,706 | 6 |
Super-duper-ultra violent but completely incoherent
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The Prodigy begins with a drug deal going sour . Only instead of 2 sides facing off against each other in a typical Mafioso fashion , someone dressed like the Scarlet Pimpernel but with the aggression of Jason Voorhees on crack , appears out of nowhere armed with a zillion weapons and cuts them all down before getting into a brutal fistfight with last man standing Truman Fisher . The action is so searingly intense , it makes recent actioners like Running Scared look like a 70s episode of Seasame Street in comparison . The mystery villain is soon revealed to be some sort of mystical mega-psycho who goes by the name of Claude Rains ( as he is , in a way , an invisible man ) after he kidnaps the nephew of a gang boss . Truman Fisher is sent to find him but discovers that there is some kind of weird connection between him and Rains . That is where my understanding of the film ends as it becomes far too messy and unfocused . At a running time of 2 hours I feel a lot of fat could have been cut to keep a tighter , more nervously wrought pace . Whenever Rains is on screen , doing his shooting , slashing and torturing the film absolutely soars . But in between , when Fisher is going from one place to another , it really lags . And by the end you won't have a clue what's going on or why . Less filler during the second act and more coherence in the third would have made this film so much better . I wasn't the only one who felt this way as there were several people in the audience who left halfway through . Made on an unbelievably small budget of $219 , 000 the film honestly looks 10 times that amount . The action and fighting is amazing and Rains is a truly terrifying , imposing villain who pushes this film well out of the Crime genre and into Horror . Obviously , since the budget is so small , it won't star anyone you've really ever heard before but they do just fine . A few characters are completely superfluous and could have been cut-out in a more preferable , leaner running time however . The film is surprisingly stylish and action-packed considering it's low-budget nature but that doesn't excuse the increasing lack of sense as it goes on . Still , it's a fine attempt at film-making and adds something new to both Action and Horror .
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564,568 | 102,816 | 43,943 | 6 |
Just eat him and get it over with !
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I hate Tweety . I hate his stupid head , his stupid eyes , his stupid voice and that whole androgynous thing he has going on . At one point in this cartoon Sylvester even gets him in his mouth but doesn't swallow . Why ? I want Tweety to be digested and never seen again ! The story in this one is the rivalry between Sylvester and another , uglier , cat out for Tweety's blood . As they are constantly working against each other the annoying bird always gets away . If they just cooperated they might have put and end to his irritating catchphrase once and for all . The Xmas theme gives it a cheery holiday feel though .
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564,487 | 102,816 | 89,880 | 6 |
Dumbo : More Blood Part II
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First Blood was a fable written in the days of old by none other than William Shakespeare . It was a tale of a simple man overcoming adversary and finding peace within himself . Well , maybe I'm lying . The simple man was true though . How simple must a man be to use the logic , " If it moves , I kill it . " Last time we saw John Rambo he was hauled off to prison for laying waste to a redneck town . And in prison he remains . For the first five minutes , anyway . Colonel Trautman shows up to offer Rambo an Escape From New York-style ultimatum . If he goes back to ' Nam and takes photos of American P . O . W . s , he'll receive a full pardon for his crimes against the hillbillies . " Do we get to win this time ? " , he asks . " This time , it's up to you ! " Trautman says , which basically gives him licence to massacre as many baddies as possible . And massacre he does . The first movie had a body count of one . Just a single death in the whole film . And it was accidental , caused by the character's own stupidity . Whatever reality First Blood had is well and truly gone now . The biggest strength of this sequel is its rousing score by Jerry Goldsmith . The original theme is expanded and exploited , with brilliant new ones kicking in at moments of high action . It's exciting stuff and you can only imagine how poor the film would be without it . George Pan Cosmatos was widely regarded as a hack . There is nothing here to prove otherwise , but his direction is adequate , rather than exceptional . The scene where Rambo emerges from a pile of mud is one of the few moments of directorial spark . By today's standards , it's pretty simple stuff , but back in ' 85 , when the actor Ronald Reagan was still in The White House and the Cold War took it's last few breathes , it became a massive hit . It's no secret that America lost in Vietnam . And 10 years on the country still felt cheated by the government . It needed a way to get back at them and show who the boss REALLY is . So Rambo returns to kick ass . Originally written by James Cameron as a script called First Blood II : The Mission , the film was never going to be anything other than pure fantasy . And it is here that the one-man-against-the-world sub-genre started . The villains are cardboard . Steven Berkoff plays the role of a stereotypical Ruskie bad guy with no grace , or charm . His character serves no purpose other than for Rambo to kill him last . No huts , or shacks , exist for any other reason than for Rambo to blow them up . No Viet Cong shows his face and lives . It's this touch-and-go attitude that prevents the film from becoming truly engaging , or worthy . The standard three act structure is apparent and you can tell that the producers just wanted to churn out a money maker rather than anything serious . Ted Kotcheff made First Blood about an emotionally scarred man , who wanted no more than what he deserved . Shakespeare it was not , but it was a good movie , even if it didn't set the box office on fire - just everything else . Now George Pan Cosmatos takes the same character and turns him into a disturbed schizophrenic mass murderer . No human emotion , just mindless violence . Although there is room for Rambo's big speech at the end , it's not as clever , nor as moving , as is it was first time around . It sounds so very " American " and disgustingly patriotic . Still the movie takes millions and Rambo has become an historical icon . Everything about the Reagan era is is this movie . It's superficial , narrow-minded and VERY un-PC . But hey . . . it was the Eighties .
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564,128 | 102,816 | 89,885 | 6 |
Fun , but loses its edge on repeat viewings
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Herbert West ( the man who's's mansion you battle through in the Splatterhouse video games ) is an amoral and rather eccentric Doctor studying at the Miskatonic University ( the very institution which sent a doomed expedition to the Mountains of Madness ) in Arkham , Massechusetts . He has created a serum which can bring the dead back to life . Only there's a problem , the longer the subject has been dead , the more violent and murderous his resurrection will be . Teaming up with a reluctant fellow student they experiment on twice dead cats and then onto real people . But the sleazy Doctor Hill finds out and muscles in on the action only to be slaughtered by West , who decapitates him with a spade . Out of pure curiosity , West brings the head and body back to life as two separate entities . And Hill continues to screw with West's work , despite having to carry around his own head most of the time . Despite being very well made for the budget it was made on , Re-Animator doesn't have much going for it outside of energetic performances and a real enthusiasm for horror to rarely seen these days . There is no plot and events in the film only seem to happen to shock us or lead into yet another gore scene . And there lies another problem . The filmmakers are keen to give us loads of gore and entrails and while they may be gross the first time round , by the second viewing you'll be disappointed at how tame it really is . No horror is implied or suggested . The only horror there is is that which is shown on screen . The indignity of not being able to rest in peace is never once considered and the murderous corpses are not all that scary . Richard Band's score is nothing more than just alright too . It has an urgent sound to it but doesn't do much for the film and is completely free of melody or theme . In fact I'd argue that it's just the same cue played over and over . The makers are keen to make it as best as they can and you can tell that they had a blast making it . But it's just not even up to standards the genre had been set by films like Evil Dead . And , speaking of Evil Dead , the Necronomicon ( according to H . P . Lovecraft ) is located in the library of Miskatonic University . Why didn't Doctor West just use that to bring the dead back to life ? Despite being a bit above mediocre , I still look forward to the sequel and I must say that Jeffrey Combs is brilliant as West . You can always rely on him to creep you out .
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564,271 | 102,816 | 35,279 | 6 |
Almost there , but not quite .
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While certainly not one of Hitchcock's better films , Saboteur is an energetic and interesting ride nonetheless . Barry Kane ( Robert Cummings ) is an average Joe working at an aviation plant . A fire breaks out and his best friend is killed in the blaze . Incompetent Cops finger him as the main suspect and he sets off across the desert wilderness on a mission to clear his name . Along the way he meets an assortment of eccentric characters including Patricia ( Priscilla Lane ) a blonde paperweight who initially slows him down but eventually believes he's innocent and decides to help . The story takes some interesting turns and develops a good deal of mystery . But there are some weird moments and plot holes that create confusion . What is the deal with the telescope in Soda City that points to a dam ? Why the fire in the aviation plant in the first place ? Why the plot against the launching of the Navy ship ? Why is a cinema audience laughing at a serious film with no funny bits happening ? Why does Patricia pay her captors for the milk shake they got her ? In regards to the first 3 points , these may be conspiracy plots that are part of a much bigger plan that is never really mentioned . But why not ? I do hate exposition in movies but even a couple of suggestions here and there about the full story would have made a more satisfying film . It is one of Hitchcock's many man on the lam / mistaking identity / wrong guy films and works rather well in that regard . But some parts just seems rushed and as a result the films seems a bit incomplete .
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564,117 | 102,816 | 431,197 | 6 |
An entertaining , if utterly ineffectual , load of gung-ho nonsense
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As much as Peter Berg tries his hardest to make The Kingdom as gritty and hard-edged as a typical Michael Mann movie ( who produces this film ) it fails to convince since it just has to much of a Hollywood shine . The film is too polished and slick and ends up coming across as a lighter version of Syriana , only with loads of action instead of a patient political plot line . The ever present Muslim Extremists massacre loads of Americans living in a protected area in Saudi Arabia . Jamie Foxx and his gang persuade the authorities to go over there and investigate . No one is happy with letting them go but they slowly start to work out that the attack was masterminded by the evil Abu Hamza . And no , it is not the hook-handed , Muslim hate-preacher recently seen on the streets of London . It's a different character altogether . A rather poor choice of name if you ask me . There isn't THAT much going on in the movie , to be honest . But it's never really boring . Once the action really gets going it all seems to be over before you know it . The ending comes too quickly , without a decent payoff or defining moment . And what's with the nihilistic ending ? All the wannabe hardcore movies being made these days are opting for the pessimistic final moments in a vain attempt at making up for the silly , over-the-top violence that came before it . Don't get me wrong , The Kingdom does have some bloody moments to it , but when your cheering the brutal deaths of loads of ethnic people you should surely begin to question your judgement and that of the people responsible for making the movie . The Arabs are an easy target , in more ways than one . In a way , The Kingdom feels a little bit like Rambo : First Blood Part II in that a defeated and hurting USA fights back at the faceless threat and wins . Thus cancelling out any previous loss . Well , I guess that no one really ' wins ' at the end The Kingdom , it's a negative victory if any . But we are supposed to enjoy the bloodshed . Until the hardcore ending that is . It's no masterpiece , but it does prove that Peter Berg ( who has a small role as an FBI analyst near the beginning ) is maturing as a director and Jamie Foxx isn't as annoying as he has been in the past . But whoever chose Jennifer Garner to be in this movie needs to take a closer look at their casting skills .
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563,780 | 102,816 | 177,789 | 6 |
Nice movie , no lasting appeal however
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Galaxy Quest has great FX . SFX never used to matter to me much as a decent storyline is always more important . But in Galaxy Quest you get both . It is very rare that you get a movie that the whole family can watch that is actually good . The movie is so clever and sharp and witty that you wonder why more Hollywood films can't be this original . I must use that word again . Original ! You must see Galaxy Quest for all these reasons . In comedy movies I never really care about the characters but there was an exception here . The Thermians are so funny . The way they talk , walk and ? clap . The character of Brandon was my fave and he had the best sub-plot in the movie . My only gripe is that it only lasts for about 102 minutes . If it were about 15 minutes longer it would be so great . But as it is aimed at a family audience I guess they had to satisfy the parents , who didn't know how good the movie was , by making it a bit shorter . It's a shame .
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563,864 | 102,816 | 89,904 | 6 |
A mild adventure comedy
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It takes a lot to get around the alarmingly 80's Edinburgh featured in this movie . A lot has changed since then and since the movie is about 2 guys who are bored with their lives , the city scenes are shot in the most drab and depressing way possible . This only accentuates their adventures in the countryside . Basically Ronnie and Will are on the edge . They hate their lives so much and decide that a little highway robbery in the highlands would be just the fun they are looking for . What begins as a little fun soon leads to them becoming local heroes and , by the end , immortal legends . With good characters , some funny scenes and a nice feel-good factor towards the end , Restless Natives makes for easily diverting entertainment . It's long , long out of print and ancient VHS ex-rental copies go for £135 at online auction sites . I think a DVD release is rather overdue . I hope it comes in widescreen when it does . I am unsure or the original aspect ratio but the copy I saw was in pan and scan and the lack of wide shot in the countryside scenes felt awkward and disorientating . The mangled Glaswegian accents did NOT fit the Edinburgh setting though .
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564,124 | 102,816 | 35,317 | 6 |
Silly , patriotic nonsense . But still watchable .
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Holmes smuggles a scientist out of Nazi Germany and into Britain because he wants to sell a new bomb-scope to the government . How utterly absurd , but the Brits need some new secret weapon to crush the Krauts . When he arrives in London he is promptly snatched from under the careless supervision of Doctor Watson . The culprit is none other than Moriarty ( even though he clearly died in an earlier Rathbone / Bruce adventure ) . There's plenty of the usual Holmes atmosphere ( heightened by the black and white photography ) , double-crosses and cunning within the plot but the ' modernisation ' of Holmes in a 20th century setting just does not and will not ever fit . The patriotism of it all just made me roll my eyes too many times . Especially at the end when Holmes does the now totally overused ' This other Eden , this England ' Shakespeare quote . And I bet Moriarty returns even though his off-screen ' death ' sounded pretty definite . Fun , but certainly no classic .
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564,030 | 102,816 | 35,318 | 6 |
Absurd story saved by atmosphere .
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I remember seeing the beginning of an old Rathbone / Bruce Sherlock Holmes movie a while ago that opened with a card explaining why they took Holmes out of the Victiorian Era and transplanted him into WWII . Apparently Holmes is ' timeless ' see , so that makes it alright . Well , with that logic Holmes might as well be floating around on a Space Station at some point , solving alien murders . But they only did a few , so I guess I can forgive them . This mystery has Holmes hired by the Government to find out who is behind the filthy Nazi propaganda being broadcast across Britain , frightening the public with prophecies of doom . Well , we can't have that can we ? The silly story really takes a backseat to the thick atmosphere in this one . They make truly wonderful use of shadows and darkness and I'd recommend student filmmakers to take note of this particular style as it is most effective . There is a decent twist in the end , but for such a ridiculous plot it's hardly classic Holmes stuff .
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564,015 | 102,816 | 91,369 | 6 |
Not as good as dark crystal .
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Coming a couple of years after the far more accomplished Dark Crystal this is relatively straight-forward but still a helluva lot more imaginative than any family movie of recent years . You could call it a modern fairy tale , but it's just not deep enough . And for a film called Labyrinth , it's strangely uncomplicated . Jennifer Connelly ( younger and prettier , though her acting is questionable ) stars as Sarah , a teenager who bizarrely doesn't have a boyfriend and ends up living in her own fantasy world . Her dad and stepmother go out , leaving her to babysit her baby brother . Annoyed with his crying she utters a magical spell , wishing the goblins to take him away . Sure as sugar , the Goblin King himself ( Tina Turner , oh sorry . . . I mean David Bowie ) turns up and takes away the screaming tot . In order to get him back she must solve ' The Labyrinth ' ( cue dramatic music ) and reach the Goblin King's Castle within 13 hours . Along the way she meets new friends ( of the Jim Henson variety ) in the form of Hoggle the dwarf , big , hairy and cuddly Ludo and cute little fox Sir Didymus . It's pleasant enough entertainment but there are some serious problems . The most serious of them all is David Bowie's attire . Most specifically , his trousers , they are a little revealing in the crotch department to make an understatement . You'll cringe , you'll avert your eyes , yet you'll be mesmerized . Come on , how could this have been allowed in a family movie . Plus , Trevor Jones ' score is disappointingly unmagical and the filmmakers have given in to the urge to have David Bowie crank out some dreadfully 80's tunes that stagger the action and hold up the plot . It's a shame to call Labyrinth nostalgic . But if it were made today it would be full of hollow CGI . There's something charming in practical effects and puppetry ( or is that Muppetry ? ) that no computer graphic can generate . The photography and is stunning and it captures landscape and fantasy perfectly . And all those cute Jim Henson characters are far more interesting than any Hobbit . Filmed in Panavision , the 2 . 35 : 1 anamorphic picture looks good . But not exceptionally so . Columbia are so hyped up over their Superbit releases . And that's fine when considering newer movies . But for a film like Labyrinth we really should have a brand new , hi-def remastering . THAT would have looked super . What we have however is just a good-looking movie . There's hardly any grain , no dirt ( surprising considering the age of the print ) and perfect colors . Originally recorded in Dolby Stereo , the first DVD release was in 2 . 0 surround only . For this Superbit release Columbia have given us a full 5 . 1 track in Dolby Digital and DTS . How does it sound ? Like 2 . 0 surround . There is hardly any deep bass . It's front speaker biased , with little or no surround use and there's practically no difference between the Dolby or DTS tracks . We could have been given a full 6 . 1 track with stronger remastering of the original sound elements . How cool would that be ? As this is a Superbit , there are no extras . The original DVD release had an hour long documentary on it . But this Superbit is only slightly better in quality , so it's up to you to decide which one you want . Also , there is a Collector's Edition which includes this version plus loads more .
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564,140 | 102,816 | 275,309 | 6 |
Rad dude , awesome , excellent . . . whatever !
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One may need an acquired taste to sit through this movie . Just like one needs to love beer to be an alcoholic . It doesn't make it any less interesting , just tough to get to grips with . Shot in TV-style documentary , it is odd this should get a theatrical release , but who cares ? The movie is about a Seventies ghetto neighbourhood in L . A . and how kids turn the ruins of past architectural mistakes into something useful . . . for them . There are burnt down piers to surf through , concrete basins to skateboard in and empty pools to seize and claim for themselves . The kids are almost tribal in nature , sharing hatred towards outsiders , never splitting up and helping each other out . They have nothing in their life but skating and surfing , no future or plans . Chance comes in the form of skateboard competitions and some of the kids are catapulted to fame , while others make wrong choices and turn to drugs and partying . And that's about it , really , but it does hold your attention for 90 minutes . All the documentary clichés are here . Rapid fire cuts , grainy black-and-white shots when interviewing people and a gazillion Seventies tracks . But with such an elitist subject matter , this kind of film-making is essential to make the movie appeal to the masses , or , at least , smaller groups of people . No doubt , Trouble TV-watching , baggy pants , text message generation , middle class kids , trying to be street , will love it . Me ? I say it's good to watch once , to help understand an unavoidable culture .
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564,126 | 102,816 | 318,649 | 6 |
Mildly entertaining no-brainer with no soul
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Yes , Sahara does take place in the same universe as the monumental flop Raise the Titanic , a universe where the Titanic sunk in one piece . Keep your eyes open during the opening credits and you'll see a newspaper clipping of the ship being towed into New York . Matthew McConaughey takes over the role of Dirk Pitt from Richard Jordan ( whoever he is ) and teams up with Steve Zahn and Penelope Cruise for a film that should offer much more action and excitement than Raise the Titanic offered . It's doesn't really succeed . Dirk Pitt and his pal Al Giordino are professional divers / explorers who sneak off from their ordinary salvage duties to find a legendary ship packed full of treasure in a warn-torn part of Africa . Penelope Cruz is a W . H . O . doctor ( I could have made a joke there ) investigating a series of mysterious deaths and ends up on the wrong side of a local dictator / warlord . Naturally Pitt saves her and is rewarded with loads of foot-soldiers out to kill him . The treasure hunt / ecology plot could have been entertaining but nothing really amazing happens . It could have worked as an Indiana Jones-lite but it's completely free of any of the iconic or classic scenes that make that franchise so famous . What we get is a lightweight James Bond kind of film with no real edge or excitement . The anonymous direction doesn't help either and the whole thing seems to drag along rather than being a breathless ride . None of this is the fault of the actors . McConaughey and Zahn are watchable as always , though I would have liked to have seen William H . Macy and Delroy Lindo given more to do . Since , I've never read any of Clive Cussler's Dirk Pitt novels I cannot compare but whoever adapted the novel of Sahara into the screenplay forgot to put anything resembling spectacle or epic into it . Sahara is good for a single viewing only . There's nowt in here that make you come back for more . Which is rather worrying since Paramount bought the rights to 3 of Cussler's Dirk Pitt novels . They ought to make them better than this , but it's still superior to the similarly plotted National Treasure .
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563,788 | 102,816 | 41,952 | 6 |
Love Deuce
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Tom attends a Tennis championship , with Jerry in tow as a ball boy ( or mouse ) of sorts . Cigar-smoking Butch is his rival , and is a much better player . When he realizes that Tom is out of his depth , Jerry manipulates the players into using increasingly deadly tricks against each other , without any kind of reaction from the viewing crowds . There's enough visual humor in this one to make it worthwhile and it's a welcome break from the usual chase through the generic house . I just wish that the extent of the jokes went beyond the characters batting stuff at each other and tripping over the net . Above average .
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564,801 | 102,816 | 90,098 | 6 |
Feels like something's been cut out
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At 86 minutes and half a dozen subplots not being wrapped up or developed in any way at all . For example the subplot involving John Laroquette is never given the chance to become anything . His whole presence in the movie is totally pointless and I suspect there was a whole ' Candy's wife may be cheating on him ' plot that was cut out because it just too similar Chase / D'Angelo in Vacation . We never know what happens to Richard Crenna or Rip Torn after the Regatta and we never know how the rest of the Summer Rental went . It's like the writers knew there was no plot , chucked in this Regatta crap and thought that would be a good place to end the film when it's over . And what was wrong with the popcorn Candy and Crenna eat ? I found that pretty weird . Although I have already made comparisons to Vacation I still feel like this film is good enough without being a copycat movie . It's seems more realistic and doesn't have any slapstick humor . Candy feels more like a real guy who needs a real vacation . We want him to relax but still can't help laughing when everything goes wrong . My fave scene is when he returns home to find it transformed into some kind of free-for-all Funhouse . But for a film set in Florida there is a huge lack of nice scenery and the photography isn't so cool . I wonder why Kerri Green ( who starred in The Goonies the same year ) never made another mainstream movie tho . Joey Laurence did so why not her ? If you like comedies , but hate the scatological humor that most present day comedies have , then this is a good enough escape . I miss John Candy and wish he made more movies before he died .
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564,520 | 102,816 | 217,869 | 6 |
Good ideas , okay execution
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But oh Lordy was the dialogue bad . I mean very , very , very bad . Bad to the point that my cousin my girlfriend and me almost walked out . Also it took quite while for anything to happen . But when it did it was kind of worth it . And being a comic book fan myself I appreciated it more than most . I think it was a good idea for pretentious director of several undeserving blockbusters . M . Night Shyamalan to film this movie in widescreen . As you probably know from my other reviews , I hate flat photography . The Sixth Sense was made this way and I found it very irritating as the story deserved some scope . Also , this film was way better than Sixth Sense and I found the twist to be more wholesome and pleasing . The kid who plays Willis ' son looked uncannily like Haley Joel Osment and Samuel L . Jackson made a BIG mistake with the afro . But his performance was still good . It's good to see that actors and directors take comic books seriously as authentic literature rather than classifying them as ' geeky ' things . For that I like the movie despite the abominable dialogue .
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564,692 | 102,816 | 21,814 | 6 |
Interesting though rather unvivid and tame
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Dracula opens very well with lavish sets and a genuine spooky atmosphere as a young lawyer named Reinfield visits the Count's Transylvanian castle to settle some business . But after this , when the story takes us to London , it seems more disjointed and vague . I don't understand what has supposed to have happened to Reinfield , why did he go mad ? If Dracula bit him then why didn't he die or become a vampire ? And the story is a bit confusing . Did Dracula plan on killing certain women when he came to London or did he just go with the flow ? Why did he come to London in the first place ? It's never really clarified . Which is a bit odd considering all of the expositional dialogue featured in the movie . Though it sounds incredibly unpurist , I did enjoy this film much more with Philip Glass's new score . The chewed up Swan Lake music at the start just got on my nerves and I feel Glass's music gave the whole film a new sense of consistency and tied it together a little tighter . I would have liked it more if it showed us the gore and killing rather than simply implying it . I know it was the ' 30s but they still could have made an effort . I see nothing that would shock even a naive ' 30s audience . And surely I am not the only one who thinks that Dracula looks a uncannily like Steven Seagal .
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564,601 | 102,816 | 91,223 | 6 |
A crazy , but fun ride .
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In the Eighties , horror flicks were all the rage . Sequels were obligatory and every year saw another Freddy , Jason , Pinhead or Michael Myers shocker . Among these were the House movies , which are a lot better than the genre reputation suggests . First and foremost , this is not strictly a horror film . There are some sprinklings of light comedy here and there and the monsters are so ridiculous that they don't really scare . It sure makes for a welcome change in a decade full of blood , knifings and slayings . Roger Cobb ( William Katt ) is a horror novelist , suffering from writers block . He can't seem to continue with his latest book , a recollection of his tour in ' Nam . The fans are eager but they want horror , not some war story . On top of all this , he is also dealing with a divorce and coping with the mysterious disappearance of his son . Depressed , he moves to his aunt's house , from where his son vanished and in which the old lady hung herself . A creepy log cabin in the mountains might be more appropriate , as Roger finds just as many distractions here . The first distraction is his neighbour Harold ( George Wendt ) , who shows up at the worst moments to hassle Roger in the Ned Flanders style . The second distraction is a little more sinister . Monsters burst out of the closet at midnight , doors in the house lead into different dimensions and he is haunted by the memories of his best friend ( Richard Moll ) , whom he betrayed back in ' Nam . Third , there is a sexy blonde , who bathes in his pool . One of the most appealing things about House is that Roger doesn't respond with any clichéd horror movie tactic - running away , falling flat on his face , hiding under the sink , etc . Instead , he buys a camcorder and tries to capture the monsters on film to convince Harold , and himself , that he is not crazy . He even manages to persuade Harold to help him catch a big raccoon , which hides out in a certain closet and only shows itself at midnight . Even at this , Harold gets scared , but not us . The film is only slightly dark and keeps a jovial mood for an hour and a half . Steve Miner ( Halloween H20 , Lake Placid ) intrigues us as much as Roger as to what the hell is going on . Ethan Wiley's script is the tiniest bit loose , but is smarter than you would think and even contains a few little touches that you might miss on the first couple of viewings . It could have been beefier and longer , but if it was , it wouldn't be as irresistibly charming .
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564,110 | 102,816 | 457,443 | 6 |
The proof is in the pudding
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If there was ever any doubt that R-Type II was nothing more than a slightly different version of R-Type then R-Type DX should lay them to rest forever . You can play this game in 5 ways . First you have the black and white Gameboy version of R-Type . And let's face it , who wants to play that ? Or you can play it in color . A wiser choice . This option also features on R-Type II ( now missing the cool underwater level seen in the arcades ) . Or you can choose to actually play the game as R-Type DX , which is a combination of both . And you'll never know it . It's a bit dull , the infinite continues don't temp me to play for hours on end and the primitive graphics of the Gameboy Color don't do justice to the usually brilliantly detailed R-Type universe .
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564,129 | 102,816 | 355,479 | 6 |
Genesis version is actually not that great . C64 is better .
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I found this game to be very difficult on the C64 . Along with busting ghosts around New York you had to manage the company's budget . The more ghosts you successfully caught ( not that easy ) the more money you got and you could upgrade your equipment and Ecto-1 . Like I said , I wasn't very good at it and the game always went very badly once Gozer came to town . The Keymaster and the Gatekeeper would find each other and then that would be ' game over ' . Knowing full well that the Genesis version is completely different , I thought I would give it a go anyway . It's not good . Instead of being a skill-based sort of RPG it's a horrid platformer with poorly designed , absurd levels and ugly characters that look like head-knockers . The managerial aspect is still there but not as fun . And why are the Proton Packs not flying out proton streams ? They fire slimy bullets instead . What ? That's not what we saw in the movies ! It's actually very similar to the Extreme Ghostbusters : Code Ecto-1 game released for the GBA in 2002 . It's a rather boring platforming shoot-em-up that makes you feel like a Ghostbuster in no way at all . I'd actually stick to the C64 version .
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563,949 | 102,816 | 93,409 | 6 |
All in favor say ' Die '
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It may well have appeared fresh and exciting back in 1987 but Lethal Weapon is soaked in so many 80s clichés it's sometimes hard to take it seriously . First of all we have the maverick cop on the edge who doesn't play by the rules but gets results . Second we have him being teamed up with a by-the-book partner . Third . . . it's all about drugs . There are countless more , from LA setting to the Vietnam vet psycho stuff and even all the way down to the deep voiced trailer guy saying stuff like ' They'll have to work together even if it kills them ' and so-forth . Opening with long travelling shot of LA , complete with an agonizingly 80s credit front , Lethal Weapon begins with the death of a porn actress , high on cocktail of white powders , who thinks she can fly . But what she really gets is a 20-storey descent to the parking lot , the fast way . I first saw Lethal Weapon on TV in about 1990 and this scene had pretty much everything cut from it , the nudity , the drugs , it's amazing people actually made sense of films back then . Anyways , before I go off on a tangent rant , the dead girl is actually the daughter of a crooked banker involved in heroin smuggling . LAPD Sargeant Roger Murtaugh is his old pal and takes the case , but not before being teamed-up with renegade , suicidal cop Martin Riggs . Together ' They don't make the rules , they break them ' and ' They'll have to survive each other first ' and ' blah blah blah ! ' Honestly , the wafer-thin plot of Lethal Weapon has truly perished with time . Bad guys smuggle heroin , cops kill them for it . There are multiple , totally absurd elements such as Riggs being a Vietnam vet despite only being about 30 at the time ( meaning he was 19 when the conflict ended ) , the rolling around with the gun firing a gun blindly but still hitting targets is hard to swallow , the martial arts showdown seems to come out of nowhere and belongs in a different film , kids recognizing tiny special forces tattoos from a significant distance and the contrived death of Murtaugh's daughter's never seen boyfriend . In fact , a LOT of this film is contrived and rather ramshackle . Shane Black IS a great writer but this film is just too underdeveloped . We never get to see the heroin or learn anything about how the villains do business . There's not any decent amount of mystery solving or police procedure and there is absolutely NO reason at all for the film being set at Christmas . There is no festive , yuletide atmosphere or Xmasy themes . Plus , with the film being set in LA , Christmas is all blue skies and sun . It adds nothing at all . What makes Lethal Weapon watchable however are the characters and the silly banter between them . Riggs and Murtaugh really seem to click with each other as pals and I think it's this that kept the sequels coming rather than the need to tell another macho action story set in LA . And I do wish that Michael Kamen never used those damn saxophones ! The score can frequently be quite jarring and annoying whenever those things start screeching . I have the limited edition score CD , but skip those tracks whenever I stick it on . But since Kamen has died in recent years I will spare him my rant over his misjudged score . Unwisely regarded as a classic , Lethal Weapon only exhibits how to weave 40 million clichés into a macho action movie . The humor is what I like best , I can leave the rest to stagnate back in the 80s , where it really belongs .
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563,913 | 102,816 | 93,428 | 6 |
Alright , hold on tight now . It's down , down to the wire !
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The first of Dalton's double-bill as 007 is a merely above-average affair . The one thing that really stops TLD from being a better film is the fact that it's just too tame . This was the last Bond film to be given a PG rating as it was clear that they couldn't appeal to the family audience any longer . With a new Bond should have come a new approach . Yes , it does feel more modern and realistic but since the script was originally designed for Moore they missed a chance at taking advantage of Bond's dark side . Thankfully , they did exactly that in Licence to Kill . Ian Fleming's story had Bond on a sniping mission , detailing every characteristic and moment of his assignment . Upon spotting the person he's been ordered to kill he discovers it's a beautiful woman and chooses to wound her instead of killing her . Wishing M to fire him for disobeying orders he comments that he must have ' scared the living daylights out of her ' . The story ended on this note . The film expands this premise and has Bond escort a defecting Soviet agent from Russia only to disbelieve his story of a Russian General going berserk . Upon investigating further he discovers a plot involving the Mujhadeen and an American Arms dealer . Despite these complications and developments , there's just not enough killing ! Without meaning to sound bloodthirsty , I just think that Bond should have laid waste to more bad guys . The script doesn't really give him a chance to . And , as a result , the film seems watered-down and too broad . Director John Glen stages and frames the action very well , as always but it's John Barry's score ( his last involvement with the series ) that gives it that extra punch . The Bond theme , so incredibly worn-out and done-to-death , is given a new spin , a faster tempo and more modern feel . Despite being about nine when I first saw it , this is the first thing I realized . They ruined a lot of potential by not taking this renewing further and not giving us a tougher film . Of Dalton's reign as 007 , Licence to Kill is definitely the superior film , but don't rule-out Living Daylights . Average it may be , but still far from being anywhere near bad .
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564,454 | 102,816 | 220,099 | 6 |
Cool movie .
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But it should have been a bit longer . 77 minutes is not enough . I have always loved Disney's animation of the Winnie the Pooh TV show and I was way excited when I first learned of this movie . 100 acre wood looks as magical as it always has done and is presented very well in this feature . The story itself is a bit childish but still manages to have balls when it has Tigger FAIL to find his family . Although I would have liked him too I respect the ending they went for . Although this film isn't to everyone's tastes ( I know it seems a little fruity a guy of 20 can like this film ) I say you should see this movie , preferably with kids . It's perfect child fodder and good entertainment . Not just family entertainment . Should be longer though .
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563,843 | 102,816 | 37,168 | 6 |
The Pearl of Blandness
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There's not a hell of a lot of mystery or suspense in this Holmes movie , I'm sorry to say . The sets , the characters and the plot are all so generic and ordinary that nothing really stands out . It begins with Holmes successfully recovering a priceless stolen pearl ( wow , what an amazing macguffin ) from a bunch of thieves and returning it to it's rightful owner . But , in a moment of arrogance , he disables the alarm at the museum when he points out the security faults and the pearl is stolen again by some arch-villain who fails to impress and probably wouldn't even say boo to a goose in real life . The usual questions and snooping around follow with Lestrade acting like a moron and Watson bumbling around in the background . I'm grateful that this one doesn't have any silly WWII sentiment in it but , once again , it is clearly filmed on Universal's medieval Europe set which looks and feels absolutely nothing like London . Did you know that I have , so far , not seen Big Ben in any one one of these Rathbone / Bruce movies . Even some stock footage spliced in there would make it just the tiniest bit more authentic . And what's the fascination with Pearls anyway ? It's just a marble made by an oyster .
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564,254 | 102,816 | 338,325 | 6 |
Obvious and straight-forward , but there's a lesson in here to be learned
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I hate tabloid press as much as the next person . But I will be honest to you about how I feel about movie stars . It is a dishonest profession . I don't believe in actors getting paid $20 million for a single film and living in multiple mansions when harder working folks get nothing . But then you have to consider what the character of Bo Laramie says in this film . Perhaps every time someone takes your picture you lose a bit of your soul . Maybe the constant hassling of the press is only worth $20 million . Celebrities do rub it in our faces a bit too much about how much money they have . We are the ones that see their movies and buy their CDs . It's because of us that they have what they have right ? And when we want a little bit of them back , when we want a little insight into their lives that ultimately , we , have helped create for them , they often bite back with attitude . There is a line that is not to be crossed though . The odd picture here and there is more than enough . But as there are so many , many tabloid magazines out there , all with the same kind of single-word single-syllable title , the business has become very diluted and all of them are willing to buy the most mundane photos of celebs doing uninteresting things . Not only this , but they take it to rather perverted extremes and it baffles me that anyone could be at all interested in it . I've seen long-shots of celebs hanging around like any person ought to but with massive close-ups of sweaty armpits , circled for the benefit of anyone not enlightened to the point of the picture . Morbid close-ups of some celebrity's blouse revealing some milkshake she spilled a few hours earlier is just plain creepy . Sadly , there are thousands of parasites out there who are willing to fork over their hard-earned cash for such rags . I'll never understand the fascination . Celebs are made out to be Gods of some kind . Something we all want to be but never can . Their teeth are perfect , their wives / husbands beautiful , their children beautiful , their homes are palaces and their lifestyles enviable . Most of us live our whole lives in jealousy of celebs . This is why we just want a little bit more back from them . They can afford it right ? With all that money and ' power ' a few pics here and there won't hurt will they ? Well , I can't imagine myself liking it very much . And , considering the crap I've seen some celebs take , I personally don't think any of it's worth $20 million . Punching a Paparazzo in the face with my fist going through his camera first sounds like the best image of all in my opinion . Since a union of celebs is actually quite powerful , I do believe their wills be much , much tighter laws in the near future to curb Paparazzi . There's always some story of some actor taking a weaselly photographer to court . Or you could do it the way Bo Laramie does . Laramie ( Cole Hauser ) is a former Montana carpenter who has , by pure chance , become a star in Hollywood through various xXx-style action movies . The public loves him and wants more than he is willing to offer . His private life is constantly being invaded by those peeking in . But they are taking pictures too . Rex Harper ( the very cool , but sadly self-destructive , Tom Sizemore ) is one of those pesky photographers . And Laramie doesn't take too kindly to Harper taking pics of his son playing football . He responds by punching out Harper , only a group of his Paparazzi pals ( including Danny-the best Baldwin , the psycho killer from Heat , and some highly annoying English guy you can't wait to see hanging from a tree ) catch the whole thing on film and whore out their footage to the highest bidder . Now with a personal vendetta between them a childish game is promptly brought to an end ( or only just beginning ) when they involve Laramie and his family in a Princess Diana-style car wreck . And instead of calling an ambulance , they take pictures of their bloody bodies . Sadly , it's not sounding far-fetched yet . Having not learned from other's mistake Laramie is still hassled by the photographers and press and they continue to fabricate stories and bend ( read utterly distort ) the truth to line their own pockets . Little do they know Laramie is planning a Punisher-style revenge on the 4 dolts responsible for his tragedy . Click on my reviews to find a coninuation of this criticism in another film of the same name as the IMDb only allows 1000 words .
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564,025 | 102,816 | 32,814 | 6 |
Dancing Duck
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Donald has woken up on the right side of the bed for a change is seriously in a great groove and plans to romance Daisy with a box of chocolates . He dances everywhere in perfect timing with a tune that we can all hear . It's one of those cartoons where actions correspond to the way the music is played and it's done very well . Donald's trip to Daisy's house is spoiled when his nephews insist on tagging along . He tries , and fails , to rid them with an ice cream bribe . Instead they manage to make him swallow a load of corn that is in the middle of popping which sends him on a wild , spastic jitterbug dance around the living room , which Daisy mistakes for genuine dancing talent . At least he ends up impressing her and getting kisses .
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564,791 | 102,816 | 120,804 | 6 |
Little intrigue , lots of opportunity missed .
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Resident Evil undoubtedly works far better on the small screen than it did at the cinema . There is no way any director ( no matter how experienced ) can bring a video game to life without sacrificing art in the process . Anderson has been here before with Mortal Kombat but injected into both movies enough competency and style to make them respectable in their own right . With Resident Evil he has given us a decent story with a touch of complication and a fair amount of suspense . My main gripe is the fact that the movie looks far too slick to be as truly disturbing as the grainy and filthy Zombie movies of the ' 70s . Plus the violence isn't all that graphic but there is still plenty of fun to be had in watching a bunch of office workers turn into the living dead and it's scary how cheaply their lives are considered by the Umbrella Corp . they work for . I'm certainly not going to work in an office for a company like that if that's what they're going to do to me . The characters are thin but not entirely one-dimensional . You do end up siding with some of them and feel urgency in their futile escape from the underground skyscraper ( shouldn't that be ' Groundscraper ' then ? ) . Milla Jovovich is cuter here than she was in Fifth Element or Zoolander but Michelle Rodriguez just plain annoys me . All I've ever seen her play is a moody Latino who frowns all the time . It's time for here to try and expand her range a bit and I wish someone else played her character . Video games will never make for classic movies . They can be mind-numbingly terrible ( Super Mario Brothers , Double Dragon ) or competent , such as this . Just turn a blind eye to the really , really bad FX at the end when a CGI monster goes on the rampage . My old Commodore 64 was capable of better graphics . The DVD is in 1 . 85 : 1 anamorphic widescreen and a choice of Dolby 5 . 1 or DTS 5 . 1 soundtracks which sound great but , as a result , also serve to highlight he meaningless and clichéd Marco Beltrami / Marylin Manson ' score ' .
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563,777 | 102,816 | 120,828 | 6 |
Action comedy ?
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In a word ? no . I'd call it more of a romantic comedy but the trailer did hint at more action than eventually appeared on screen . There is a small clip of Harrison Ford pulling one of the pirates over a waterfall and he falls to his death ( ? ) . The running time of 101 minutes and the very abrupt resolution gives the impression that there was more action before someone ordered it to be cut out . I think this may have been because the producers wanted a quirky comedy-adventure when the film turned out to be a little bit tougher . This is so apparent when pirates ( the driving force of the movie ) are in it for about 15 minutes . What's left is just an okay movie . It is neither original nor clever and has no spark or bite . But it does have a few decent laughs , some cool music and nice scenery . But once more David Schwimmer proves he can only do one character and can't even do it very well . Six Days , Seven Nights is hardly groundbreaking but is an enjoyable timepasser . Don't go out of your way for it .
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564,401 | 102,816 | 252,684 | 6 |
Well acted and involving but overall ineffectual
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Problem teens are everywhere and make everyone's life hell , we know this . I would love to send all of these miserable bastards away to some fortified compound where they can never return from . But you have to think about a few things . Why are problem teens the way they are ? Most of the time it can be attributed to bad upbringing , which is really the fault of irresponsible or evil adults . So I guess that some people are just screwed from day one . Either way , they are the kinda folks I like to avoid . Is that the wrong attitude for me to have ? The ubiquitous Joseph Gordon Levitt plays Lyle , a teenager who has been sent to a juvenile mental hospital because he cracked open the skull of a kid who taunted him . While I would usually say the kid deserved it , it becomes clear that Lyle has too much aggression crammed inside him and has no way of controlling it other than the occasional blind rage or makeshift mosh-pit . While in the hospital he makes pals ( and some enemies ) with a fragile Native American kid , a no-confidence girl and another boy with manic depression ( oh , sorry . . . ' Bi-polar disorder ' ) . It's nothing particularly astonishing but it's the commitment to acting and making it all seem as real as possible that makes it so watchable . This is helped by director Jordan Melamed's documentary style and hard close-ups of actors without make up and with their honest faces and zits . There's more honesty and realism in the fighting too , which does occur at regular intervals and somehow seems more engaging than in action movies . I myself have pulverised people ( who I hated and thought really deserved it ) into the dirt only to feel huge guilt as they look up at me all bloodied and broken , their eyes watering . I assume so many of these angry teenagers put on this act of aggression and being hard to hide how sensitive they really are . It's not a big revelation I know , but it's very well done in the film . In the end it doesn't do much else than offer a balanced view of such kids . Not everyone has the power to turn their rage off , not all parents are going to be wonderful . But who says you are any better ? Maybe we could all get along better if everyone admits that they could be a better person .
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564,298 | 102,816 | 116,421 | 6 |
Fun but clichéd Seagal actioner
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A lot more effort is put into crafting this Seagal movie rather than assembling it . The photography is angled strangely and the lighting tries to make certain scenes dingy and others sinister . In this movie Seagal and Keenan Ivory Wayans go up against the Russian mafia . In doing so they produce a lot of dead bodies in action scenes that are satisfying and fun to watch . Although they are edited just a little too quickly . At first I thought this movie was called The Glimmer Man because of the stupid jackets Seagal wears . He should be arrested by the fashion police , I'm not kidding . But overall I give this movie .
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564,317 | 102,816 | 97,388 | 6 |
Pretty boring and hardly a drop of blood
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I don't know why Paramount kept on making these movies if they always cut out the violence and gore . There's hardly any of it in this film despite the high body count ! That said , this one does have a few ( a few ! ) traces of wit and intelligence . Jason doesn't look as threatening though . He's a bit to cuddly and this was made when Kane Hodder was still the best Jason . But how can he get from a sinking ship in the middle of the ocean to New York when he cannot swim ? And can someone please tell me how a ship sailing from British Columbia can end up in New York ? Now that almost an impossibility unless they go around Cape Horn and that would take weeks !
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564,621 | 102,816 | 189,070 | 6 |
Above average old school Scooby Adventure
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This entry suffers from the presence of Scrappy . It was made in the mid-eighties when Scrappy was at the height ( ! ) of his fame ( ? ) . He doesn't do much in this so it's not that bad . The story is about Shaggy ( minus the rest of Mystery Inc . ) being left a spooky mansion house in his uncles will . Conveniently said mansion is in the middle of a creepy swampland in the Deep South . The kind of place where there are always eyes watching from the trees . As soon as he arrives , Shaggy has to deal with an annoying southern stereotype sheriff , a weirdo butler who wants to get his hands on the old uncle's hidden treasure , hickabilly neighbors and the ghost of his uncle telling to leave ( then why did he give him the house ? ) . There is also an escaped ape on the loose but even though only Scooby sees him ( Shaggy doesn't believe it ) he's just a big , cuddly monkey who wants to play . The Boo Brothers are basically ghost versions of the Three Stooges . They're listed in the phone book as being experts in the busting of ghosts . This isn't a job they do well though , so Shaggy's payment at the end is a bit too generous . There are some laughs to be had and the plot is mildly interesting but too many running jokes are just plain bad . The hillbilly neighbor joke becomes very boring and could have been done without . The animation is a bit dated , though it has enough modern touches ( lens flares in car lights ) to distract you from it . And I like the dark , decaying atmosphere of the swampland . The color pallet is mostly made up of dark blues and purples ( the story takes place all in one night ) and the backgrounds are not as generic as the earlier , cheaper TV shows . For the average fan this is a worthy effort though I would just catch it on the Cartoon Network instead of forking over the cash , unless you're a Scooby completist . The DVD is in 1 . 33 : 1 full frame , as drawn , with a Dolby Mono soundtrack that is unsophisticated but workable . The Region 2 release comes in a sturdy Keep Case but the Region 1 is still in a cruddy snapper . Extras are minimal childish fluff .
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564,273 | 102,816 | 342,258 | 6 |
Great character drama , mediocre action film
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The publicity for this film claimed that Jet Li's fight scenes were ' so intense that test audiences were leaping out of their seats ' . Well , I didn't find it to be that way . Danny the Dog ( I simply refused to call it Unleashed ) works best as a character drama with only a few silly fight scenes in between . Writer Luc Besson gave Jet Li a choice of either doing a sequel to Kiss of the Dragon or something a bit more serious . Li opted for serious and Besson wrote the script exclusively for him . With the director of The Transporter giving the orders one would expect this film really kick ass . Instead it merely smacks bum . Danny is an orphaned boy taken in by mob boss Bart ( Bob Hoskins in a role that Albert Finney , Michael Caine and Brain Cox turned down ) and forced to be a guard dog who eats raw food out of cans and is kept in a dank cellar with his favorite teddy bear . Danny is somehow trained in the deadly arts and will massacre everyone threatening his master in the blink of an eye if his steel collar is removed . When Bart is taken out in a gangland slaying Li wanders the streets until he is taken in by blind piano tuner Sam ( Morgan Freeman in one of his most surprising choice of characters ) and his step-daughter Victoria ( the oh-so-cute Kerry Condon ) . As they bond as a ( somewhat dysfunctional ) family , Danny learns , through music , what it's like to be human , have real feelings and emotions . But when Bart returns and wants his dog back ( why doesn't he just get a real dog ? ) a bloodbath is threatened . What we get is a bloody nose and that's about it . The film has a very dank and miserable feel to it . So it's only appropriate that it should be set in the most depressing city in the world ( that would be Glasgow , it chills me to even say the name ) . A lot of audiences have been puzzled and critical that everyone in the film is either American or English , but if you've ever heard a Glaswegian accent you'll understand why the filmmakers were keen to avoid it . Of this I will say no more . It sounds far-fetched but it's actually very well acted , especially by Jet Li , who as an Asian actor with English as a second language proves he's way more than a Hong Kong Fuey . Where the film fails is in the very silly and often totally unconvincing fight scenes . ' Leaping out of their seats ' my reptilian ass ! These have to be the tamest punch-ups that Cory Yuen has ever staged . Kiss of the Dragon and even the PG-13 rated Transporter have much better action than this . And why the film is rated 18 I'll never ever know . I've seen plenty of gorier , harder action films than this get a lower rating . Since hardly anyone dies and there's barely a drop of blood to be had in the whole film ( by comparison at least ) the 18-rating is completely undeserved and only helps promise something that the film ultimately doesn't deliver . In no way is it a bad film , just a bit too tame from what we've come to expect from Besson and co .
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564,688 | 102,816 | 76,217 | 6 |
A bit boring
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Since I am not American , I have no idea what a homecoming queen is and I am not familiar with their football rules . This Peanuts TV special is mainly about both so I was a little bit lost for most of it . The story has Charlie Brown struggle ( and unfairly lose ) a football match and then finally get to meet his wannabe girlfriend ( the little red-headed girl who finally see and is called Heather ) at the Homecoming Ball ( whatever that is ) . The build of dread as he approaches her is quite amusing and when he finally kisses her the reaction is brilliant . Too bad the rest of it is below par . Though the scenes with Woodstock pretending to be a TV cameraman and flying around on Snoopy ( who's ear act as chopper blades ) are typically surreal and undoubtedly the best moments .
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564,580 | 102,816 | 95,444 | 6 |
Some fun to be had , but mainly boring .
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Killer Klowns is sort of a homage to paranoid sci-fi movies of the 1950's , but lacks the shlock charm of the Blob remake which came out in the same year . The plot is absolute nonsense . Killer Klowns from , you guessed it , Out Space land in rural America in their big-top spaceship . Their motive , to snatch humans away for dipping in their poisonous cotton candy . Told you it was nonsense , but the movie knows this and doesn't waste any time with sincerity ( a fatal flaw with far too many cheapo horror flicks ) . The Klowns , in a very weird way , are quite cute . And I wasn't afraid of them . In fact , when they are not on the screen the movie gets rather boring . The main characters are total clichés with no charm . The Klowns however , are very funny ( ironic considering I hate them in real life ) . As a stupid , but slick , no-brainer Killer Klowns works fine . As the Saturday Night's main event it's best to look elsewhere . The DVD is in good-looking 1 . 85 : 1 anamorphic widescreen with Dolby 2 . 0 sound . There are quite a lot of extras too . For fans of this movie , this DVD is priceless .
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564,242 | 102,816 | 30,448 | 6 |
An okay cartoon
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In this short Mickey , Donald and Goofy are living a sort of Gypsy lifestyle , moving from place to place in their caravan . Goofy is the driver and when breakfast is served he leaves the car driving on it's own and goes back into the caravan to eat . Well , you pretty much know what's going to happen now huh ? That's right . . . disaster . Disaster seems to follow these characters everywhere and their cartoons only ever seem to be made up of it . However , some of the contraptions and near-misses in this one are quite imaginative and bring a tiny bit of something new to something old and increasingly boring . Expect only a few mild laughs .
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564,214 | 102,816 | 60,992 | 6 |
I don't smile in pictures
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A photographer goes to Pinkstone National Park to take pictures of pretty scenery . But when he fails to donate any amount of money to the donations box at the entrance , the Pink Panther feels obliged to make his trip hell . Again it's a thin set-up for pranks and games of outsmarting each other , but Pinky does play enough clever tricks ( like the one with the revolving bridge ) on the photographer to make it worthwhile . The ending is predictable and some of it is uninspired but it's overall an above average Pink Panther cartoon . I still don't understand why Pinky swallowed that box full of flash bulbs . Did he think they were marshmallows or something ?
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564,001 | 102,816 | 32,401 | 6 |
No laughs
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Out in his garden , Donald builds a huge dog bath machine with loads of pulleys and scrubs . Why he would want to subject Pluto to this behemoth instead of washing him normally I don't know but it's obviously Pluto ain't gonna be up for this . The dog himself is snoozing in his nearby kennel and Donald must trick him into going into the bath with a rubber bone on a string and then a puppet of a kitten . Pluto doesn't fall for it and the highly expected ending of Donald falling into it proves true . Only he's too happy that his craftsmanship has actually worked to be annoying . It's not that funny but the vivid and inventive animation makes up for it .
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564,342 | 102,816 | 316,732 | 6 |
Would sink to the bottom of the ocean without Latifa or Fallon
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You can't move for sequels , prequels , spin-offs and remakes ( or re-imaginings ) these days . Hollywood is suffering a real dry spell when it comes to new blood as most stuff we get now is from previously released material . Some remakes can be impressive ( Dawn of the Dead , Texas Chainsaw Massacre ) and others can be downright pointless ( Alfie ! ) . Taxi is an obscure choice . The original French version was written by Luc Besson in 21 days out of pure boredom as he waited for Columbia to green light The Fifth Element . It was an okay , silly action movie that spawned 2 sequels itself . While it's a mildly popular film it's hardly the kind of thing that warrants an American remake . How many Americans ( or anyone outside of France ) cared for the original Taxi ? As ramshackle as it is , Taxi NYC still seems to hold together thanks to the energetic performances of Queen Latifa and Jimmy Fallon . They do what the can with the limp material and are capable of duping you into believing that the movie is better than it really is . What's so bad about it ? Well , the plot is non-existent and is really just a set-up for a couple of brief chase scenes featuring Latifa's suped-up Taxi . Director Tim Story tries to copy the easy-going pastel-colored design and liberated use of widescreen photography of the original as well as keeping the speed of the chases as fast as he can but the stuff in between is so dated and his direction feels like the kind of quality film-making you'd expect of Rush Hour 86 . Plus , the sexuality of the original film has been erased . In France this would have been called harmless but in America they call it pornography . It's hard to give this film a bad review as there is at least one good laugh per scene but the cheap , cruddiness of it prevents it from being anything more than a one-time only rental that won't really hold up upon repeat viewings . Trust me . The DVD is in great looking 2 . 35 : 1 anamorphic widescreen with good enough Dolby 5 . 1 sound . The sound design is hardly anything to write home about so don't expect to . The DVD I watched ( Region 2 ) had an extended version of the film that ran 6 minutes longer . But there was nothing particularly racy in this version that would have denied the film the pleasure of being PG-13 . Let's hope they don't sequel this one .
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564,339 | 102,816 | 345,919 | 6 |
Quite good
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There are six scenes in this movie and four of them manage to be worth it . The other two . . . boring . First of all a painter draws a really crappy nude portrait of a generic blonde . Obviously this leads to sex and anal . It's dull . In the second scene the painter and his sleazy agent ' audition ' a gorgeous model ( Eva Black ) by giving her a DP . Third , the painter goes to a lawyer's office ( Sylvia Sun ) for some reason and they do sex and anal . Then he and his sleazy agent go to another lawyers house and give her a DP and double anal ( which is very cramped for those guys and you can see them laughing ) . Fifth , the 2 lawyer women meet up and do lesbian sex for some inexplicable reason ( BORING ) . Last the painter , his sleazy agent and a couple of friends meet up at an art gallery do give the owner and the curator ( Inesa and Mimi ) vigorous DPs . And then it ends . It was mostly good .
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564,683 | 102,816 | 173,721 | 6 |
A series of peanuts sketches
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There is no plot or ongoing story in this Peanuts special . It seems more like an animated version of several of Charles Schultz's ( who gives us an introduction to the show ) Peanut's comic strips . At least there is some variety at the very least . Some of the stories include Peppermint Patty being duped into graduating from Dog Obedience School believing it to be a Private School , the kids fussing over undone homework , Lucy throws away Shroder's piano and Chuck ends up in hospital . It's mildly amusing stuff but the changing stories will probably make it end being suited more for repeat viewings .
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563,805 | 102,816 | 143,127 | 6 |
Okay , not too exciting
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The main problem here is that the story focuses WAY too much on Robin . And I've never really been a fan of him . Batman practically has a cameo role in this movie . Mr Freeze is a sympathetic villain and he does set up some provoking situations for the characters but I still wanted more action and less talk if you know what I mean . Don't get me wrong . It's a thousand-million times the movie that Batman & Robin was but . . . not wholesome or entertaining enough to get any special notice . The animation is fine and the brief return of Danny Elfman's Batman theme is appreciated though I struggle to find any real reason to suggest this ' un . Only for Batman completists . The DVD is in slightly tinny Dolby Stereo and is in fullscreen . The laserdisc was in 1 . 66 : 1 and I would have appreciated it if Warner presented this DVD in that aspect ratio if it were intended by the director .
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564,720 | 102,816 | 120,670 | 6 |
Dumb , brainless action but fun in a way
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This movie only lasts for barely 89 minutes . This makes me wonder if anything was cut out of the movie in the editing room . I think there was when I watch the film . It could have been so much more . What's left is a very brief and entertaining movie about a prison break . With very little Firestorm . Many people have said that Howie Long's performance in this film is quite poor . I think that he did a fine job . I can honestly say his performance is totally adequate . William Forsythe is quite a decent villain too . Neither hammy nor campy . I'm glad he was in the movie . But I'm not glad the film was a flop . It would have been a big hit if it was longer and had more plot . You can't call a film FIRESTORM and have only a few seconds worth of fire in it . I don't know what has been cut from this film but it has damaged it severely . Chris Soth is the only person credited with writing this film but rumor has it that Graeme Yost actually wrote the first draft but used his affiliation with the of the WGA to take if off after they hashed his script around too much . Although it is bare-boned and anorexic it is still a cool film to watch .
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564,549 | 102,816 | 314,498 | 6 |
Mild , entertaining distraction
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There's lots of clichés and stereotypes to endure when watching a high school movie . For the most of it , The Perfect Score manages to avoid most of these clichés though the characters are a bit stereotypical . There's the brainy kid , the rebel , the stoner , the loser , the jock and the good guy . Hardly a breathtaking assortment of originals eh ? But their plan to steal the SAT scores and their interaction together are what make this movie worthwhile . The unimaginative marketing for this movie claims it to be Ocean's 11 meets The Breakfast Club . But the actors are carrying the movie , doing the best they can with weak material , rather than the ' wild ' premise . I especially liked Roy , the stoner and narrator as he got the most back story and had more a character arc than the rest of them . And it was pleasant to have the lovely , oh-so-cute Erika Christensen though I'm not too fussed about Scarlett Johansen ( she looks like a teenage version of my mother ! ) . A non-Shaggy , but still manic , Matthew Lillard has a small role as a concerned big brother . You'll not remember it 5 minutes after the credits role but for a non-threatening , easy-going movie The Perfect Score fits nicely . You could do a helluva lot worse . And what else do you expect from an MTV movie ? The DVD is in 1 . 78 : 1 anamorphic widescreen with lackluster Dolby 5 . 1 , though to be fair it mostly a dialogue-driven movie . There are a bunch of fluff features for those who care .
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563,840 | 102,816 | 37,248 | 6 |
Good mystery spoiled by sub-par acting .
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Holmes and Watson are attending an Occult debate in Canada ( since WHEN were they interesting in that , never mind travelling thousands of miles to be a part of it ? ) when the wife of one of the spokesmen is slaughtered by a mysterious phantom in the nearby village of La Mort Rouge ( The Red Death ) . Holmes and Watson are dismissed from having any involvement in the case but when a delayed note from the dead woman reaches them , begging for help , Holmes decides that it is his duty to interfere . It's a bit longer and a bit more substantial than most of the Rathbone / Bruce movies but it's obvious that it doesn't extend to the supporting cast , who are , without a doubt , really bad actors . The first scene in the village tavern is like watching a teen soap . And one of the actors , who plays an actor , is so convincing in one disguise yet utterly hopeless when playing himself . How topsy-turvy is that ? The atmosphere is forged of fog , spooky mansions and a general feeling of isolation . It's my favorite kind of atmosphere and certainly fits a Sherlock Holmes mystery even if it IS set in Canada and in the 1940s . But there are some nice shots in here . Not the best of the bunch , but never intolerable . The sentimental ' Canada ' speech at the end is ludicrously tacked on however . And you never really get to know what his last words are since the music drowns it out . Anyone have any ideas ?
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564,020 | 102,816 | 32,954 | 6 |
I don't get the title
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Donald and Goofy go to some lake for a quite day of sitting around in a boat . Have you ever know of any of Donald's attempts at nice days to work out ? Well , this time round the torment is not all that imaginative . First of all Goofy swallows a frog ( about the billionth time Goofy has swallowed something that drives him crazy ) and is bothered by a nasty spring while Donald's outboard motor either won't start or rips the ramshackle boat apart . It's only slightly imaginative and the mayhem slightly inspired . Donald's done better than this and the only real laugh comes right at the end .
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564,736 | 102,816 | 111,070 | 6 |
He really ISN'T real you know !
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In European countries the annual gift-giving ' character ' of Saint Nicholas is more commonly known as Sinter Klaus , a sort of colloquial term . This Sinter Klaus was changed to Santa Claus for English-speaking countries where he adopted the role of the more generic character of ' Father Christmas ' . Since the dawn of Xmas Commercialism the Santa image has been used by pretty much everyone to sell their crappy products . THIS is how kids in modern society are introduced to a such a ridiculous fantasy figure . Why do any parents feed their kids this nonsensical crap ? Imagination is fine . But lying to them about something that a 5-year-old should be able to see through is stupid . That said , as purely a fantasy movie , The Santa Clause is quite amusing . But maybe a bit too obnoxious to be a Xmas Classic . It was only made to cash-in on Tim Allen's Home Improvement success ( and directed by a Home Improvement director ) on the Disney Channel ( which is even referenced rather unsubtly ) . I suppose it was a lucrative idea , but since I believe Tim Allen is completely talentless it's not really his own success . Santa Claus sells . Not Tim Allen . That's why all his other movies have been complete failures . Allen plays the curiously initialled Scott Calvin , a man who accidentally kills Santa on Xmas Eve . Once he puts on the dead man's jacket he becomes the new Santa and is whisked away to the North Pole . Over the next year he undergoes a transformation from ordinary guy to fat , jolly fellow with a big , white beard . Much to the shock of his ex-wife and baffled boss Peter Boyle ( who would later star in the sequels as Father Time ) . I know that this is strictly a movie for kids but even before I reached double digits I questioned the logic behind ' Santa ' . Even the movie lacks basic sense-making . Why would anyone doubt the existence of the movie character Santa Claus ? Who do they think delivers free gifts to their children every year ? It doesn't add up ! If you show this to your kids and back up the lunatic conspiracy that this junk is real then shame on you . If you tell them that it is a load of crap and that the film is strictly make-belief then bravo !
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564,516 | 102,816 | 32,455 | 6 |
Ambitious and well-intentioned , but ultimately a misfire
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Fuelled with the noble ambition of bringing classical music to a wider audience , especially children , Fantasia succeeds and fails in equal amounts . Some of it works , some it bores . It could have made a perfect 85 minute movie if the crap was cut out . The first segment is enough to put you off completely . We have to suffer blips and bloops twinkling across the screen as acid-trip visuals match the music that is being played ( Toccata and Fugue in D Minor ) . Kind of like turning on the spirograph-like visuals on Windows Media Player . This is a bad way to introduce the film and it's techniques . I can only imagine the audience of the time watching it and thinking ' What the hell is this ? ' The three good segments in the movie are the story of the Dinosaurs to the music of The Rite of Spring , the over publicised Sorcerer's Apprentice , The Nutcracker Suite and A Night on Bald Mountain . All effect a wonderful atmosphere that is so lacking in modern animation . Segments featuring dancing Alligators romancing fat hippos ( The Pastoral Symphony ) or the ' meet the soundtrack ' interstitial are yawnfests with pretty much nothing happening at all , I'm sorry to say . The animation is always top-notch however and very vivid as Disney cartoons usually are . But ultimately , Fantasia is a mixed bag that not a lot of people will like or appreciate . Still worth checking out though .
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564,292 | 102,816 | 61,158 | 6 |
Quack !
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In this cartoon the Pink Panther is a quack medicine salesman who turns up in an old western town to flog some placebo vitamin pill that apparently gives you superhuman energy . But no one's buying it , quite literally . That is until some exhausted dude comes along and is so energised by it that he decides to rob the 1st National Bank and then the 2nd , 3rd etc . Blaming Pinky for this mess , the Sheriff makes him a deputy and orders him to clean it up . Some mild and not very funny mayhem follows . Some of it will make you laugh , or just grin , but it's pretty much a below average adventure for Pinky .
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564,853 | 102,816 | 32,992 | 6 |
Riveting
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Where do I get these jokes from ? Man , I crack myself up . I've been waiting all day to do that one . In this cartoon an apparently unemployed Donald is wandering around town singing the High-Ho song from Snow White . He comes upon a construction site and applies for the job of Riveter despite obviously having no experience in this field . Much to his distress he begins his day of labor at the top of a zillion-foot high skyscraper ( though the elevator only ascends 1 floor ! ) and his boss is an easily irritated man . Disaster follows as per usual but at least this one ends with Donald getting the upper hand on his beastly boss .
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564,428 | 102,816 | 39,252 | 6 |
Go fish !
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Tom sneaks into a secluded area for some fish poaching . The lake is guarded by Spike , but Tom has his same old tricks for taking care of him . In his bait box he has a captured Jerry , who he promptly disguises as a worm and casts into the lake . Some horrible sort of Gator / Fish creature pops up and decides he'd really like to get a bite of Jerry , but he'll be damned if he's gonna let Tom catch him . There are a couple of funny moments in this cartoon but it's mostly just generic stuff and recycled gags . The ending isn't really up to much either , it's all just plain uninspired .
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563,832 | 102,816 | 287,945 | 6 |
An interesting , if failed , TV pilot
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I love Bubsy the Bobcat . He's so cute and funny . His video game was loads of fun and I thought he had major potential to be a big star ( and maybe still ) . Plus I loved his T-Shirt with the big red exclamation mark ! This TV pilot however was far too-dated for 1993 and didn't think ahead . The animation , music and characters were very late-80s in design and story line was too whacked-out with no internal logic . And while I love Bubsy's trademark ' What Can Possibly Go Wrong ? ' line it is used far too many times in this 30-minute episode . It would have been nice to see at least one or two seasons of Bubsy but all we're stuck with for now is this ancient pilot that's practically impossible to track down .
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563,963 | 102,816 | 169,590 | 6 |
The Superman movie . . .
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. . . with Batman as a guest star . This 60-minute ' feature length ' show was put together from 3 separate 20-minute episodes of the Superman Animated show . Bruce Wayne and his alter-ego are in Metropolis on business . Guests they certainly are , in both senses . The bulk of the time sticks with Superman stuff . The Joker has figured out a way to kill Soupey ( that darn Kryptonite ) and asks Lex Luthor for a billion dollars to pull it off . Thus , a plot involving Batman and Superman beating henchmen , escaping death traps and flying through the night sky follows . It is rather amusing and the scenes where Kent and Wayne see through each other's identities is cool . But there's no great plot to get involved in and it ends a bit abruptly . Gotta love that Joker though . Overall , one of the weaker Batman entries , only just rises above Sub-Zero , which I regarded as the worst . See Mystery of the Batwoman or Mask of the Phantasm instead .
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563,870 | 102,816 | 33,568 | 6 |
Nighty night
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Donald is planning an early night in an effort to get up early the next day . But first he cannot get comfortable in his bed and then the ticking of the alarm clock gets on his nerves and he just can't sleep . The annoyances escalate and eventually Donald goes completely berserk . I admit I did laugh a few times at the start of this cartoon but it's a total one-joke affair . It became pretty unfunny rather quickly and my attention started drifting after his bed acted up for about the 86th time . Nah , there were some moments of good humor but overall I wasn't too impressed with this cartoon at all , despite the amusing beginning . And why is Donald living in a different house every time we see him ?
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563,892 | 102,816 | 33,544 | 6 |
Say cheese
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Donald decides to ditch hunting in favor of nature photography . A noble choice indeed . But when he heads out into the wilderness he is crestfallen when he discovers that most animals don't want their picture taken . Moreso when he finds out that they are all laughing at him behind his back . Annoyed with the lack of cooperation from the woodland creatures , Donald focuses ( pun intended ) on a red-headed wood-pecker . The usual game of out-witting each other begins . Can you guess who wins and who ends up with their new camera broken ? When Donald rushes out to buy a shotgun the cartoon fades out , so we never see if he finally got his prey . Elmer Fudd never did . It's not a very ambitious or original cartoon but it still has its laughs .
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563,772 | 102,816 | 449,092 | 6 |
Better than the sequel
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Rings is the bridge between The Ring and The Ring 2 . In the six months between the 2 films the copy of the infamous videotape made by Rachel has multiplied many times ( still no explanation as to how people know they're going to die ) and it's become such an urban legend that there is a website devoted to it . Jake , the unfortunate high school kid at the start of The Ring 2 , has watched the videotape in order to save the life of one of his so-called friends , thus taking on board the responsibility of making someone else watch it in 7 days or die by Samara's fright . Initially Jake is intrigued and is offered a glimpse into the bizarre world of post-videotape viewing that we only saw thru Rachel's eyes in the first . Nothing is explained in any greater detail but the paranormal universe Jake falls into is fleshed-out more and is highly spooky . The short even manages to outdo The Ring 2 by giving us a couple of frights . I don't care how ridiculous the movies are , the image of Samara climbing out the well will ALWAYS be spooky . Anyone who has seen The Ring 2 will already know what becomes of Jake and his would-be girlfriend Emily ( the one he forces to watch the tape ) but if you're a fan of the films then this is essential viewing . If you've yet to see The Ring 2 then it's the perfect introduction .
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564,151 | 102,816 | 18,083 | 6 |
Outdated
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Well , obviously a silent film from 1928 is going to be old-fashioned but I mean the humor isn't all that funny anymore . Slipping on banana skins ? ( Has anyone really ever done that ? ) Falling into cream cakes ? Who eats these cream cakes ? In this one L & H are waiters employed for a swanky dinner party . Would you trust them to not cause chaos ? And that is exactly what happens . There are some laughs and some moments of good physical comedy but it's not a classic . It was later remade ( better and funnier ) as an extended opening to their 1940 movie A Chump at Oxford .
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564,293 | 102,816 | 401,398 | 6 |
An entertaining , though weakly plotted sequel
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First of all , let me just say that Kronk's New Groove is very , very funny with a good amount of laugh out loud moments . Surely that is all that matters then , eh ? Well , no . Compared to the first film , the story is pretty tepid . All of the previous characters return . Of course there is Kronk himself , along with Kuzco , Pacha and his family , the babbling squirrel and Yzma ( who has now turned mostly back into a ' human ' but still features a cat's tail and feline abilities . The movie tries to incorporate all of them into the story but nothing really sticks . It all just seems like an excuse for mayhem . As before , it is told in flashback with Kronk explaining how he ended up in such sorry circumstances . His dad is coming to visit him and he's afraid of the inevitable disapproval he'll get as all he's managed to do with his life is be a Junior Chipmunk Troup Leader and run a restaurant kitchen . His dad thinks that cooking and talking to animals isn't a ' real job ' and won't give Kronk the big thumbs up until he's got his own house on a hill with loads of money . From this thin idea comes loads of deception , scheming and hijinks . And that's basically the movie . It IS packed full of hilarious moments and wonderful Looney Tunes-inspired humor like the first , but it just lacks that overall high-quality . Still , it's loads of fun and any fan of The Emperor's New Groove must give it a rent .
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564,525 | 102,816 | 100,814 | 6 |
Enjoyable , but dated and childish
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It's weird . This film is so juvenile but the throw in one ' fck ' so it has a PG-13 rating so people don't think it is too childish . Although there is some obvious dubbing of more profanity . Listen to Bacon say ' Motherhumper ' . What is that supposed to mean ? The idea behind the film is interesting as some scenes and events are quite entertaining but the execution of most of it really lame and amateur . The dialogue is quite bad throughout . Especially in the explanation of the worms origination . How did they get here ? ' It doesn't matter ' , one of the characters says . Wow ! Great imagination there . They don't even bother to give us an explanation . Kevin Bacon and Fred Ward are a great duo . Although the characters they play hate their lifestyles it seems pretty cool to me . Although I do realize it was made in 1989 it seems very 80's . The girlfriend of Kevin Bacon is entirely responsible for this . She kind of annoyed me too . Her attempts at being smart and witty just do not work . But Michael Gross was cool as Burt . I like how he is gung-ho without being irritating . It's hard to be gung-ho without getting on my nerves . Also , the smart-ass little kid who always whines is funny . The death scenes could have been a little more graphic but the fast pace of the plot after it gets going makes up for it . This film is nowhere near as good as or enjoyable as its sequel but if its on TV give it a chance . Just remember the sequel is better .
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564,717 | 102,816 | 37,480 | 6 |
Look who's talking
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Tom is trying to impress a female cat by grooming his whiskers , offering Jerry as a gift and trying his damnedest to be smooth . But it doesn't work and the girl tells him to take a hike . Not discouraged , Tom fabricates a sophisticated-looking suit out of an old hammock and tries once more . This time she falls for him and they start to play around . Obviously Jerry is going to ruin it for him and end up with the gal himself . What's weird about this cartoon is that Tom and Jerry actually talk , which is not something I thought they ever did until that awful movie in 1992 . Either way , it's still a rather funny short .
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563,845 | 102,816 | 116,136 | 6 |
Not a lot of heart in this .
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There was so much potential in the premise for Dragonheart . It could have been taken many steps further if the production team and writers genuinely cared about the film that they were making . Unfortunately , they weren't and could only be bothered in hashing together a quick and easy movie with no substance . I'm not sure what the pitch was to Universal but it seems like a bunch of C-list producers and writers felt like making Braveheart . . . for kids . Only with a Dragon instead of William Wallace . The plot is so simplistic that it really could be accurately summed up as ' bad king nasty to villagers , knight and dragon help ' . Whoa , slow down , man . I don't think I can comprehend so much in a small space of time . Rob Cohen is hardly an artistic director but the action and framing are below even his meagre standards . There are some nice shots here and there but the rest of the film looks incredibly fake thanks to the truly terrible production design . When you take away all of that , all you are left with is a film with a CGI dragon . But in the 11 years since this was released the standard of such effects has improved drastically . Draco the Dragon looks just a little bit too dated , though he is still as cute and lovable as he always was . The problems with the film extend even to the extras . It's bad enough that such talented actors are given such rotten dialogue to work with ( why none of them requested to tweak it a little bit is beyond me ) but I am assuming that no one bothered to give the villagers in the background any instructions before rolling . You have no idea how distracting it is . Another potential thrown away is the religious element . I guess that no one involved in making the film wanted to offend any kind of faith and erased as much religion from the film as possible . It doesn't even clarify that it's set in Britain either . There are some flippant remarks to Camelot ( conviniently just a few miles down the road from any point on the map ) but almost the whole film was shot in Romania and the accents are all over the place , as usual . The one , major , plus-point of the movie is Randy Edelman's glorious score . It's the only decent score he's ever composed in his entire career but it's simply amazing . Well worth hunting down the CD for , I assure you . Dragonheart is just too tame and tepid to make any kind of lasting impression . There too many faults to forgive . It's better than Eragon , but nowhere near the beauty of Dragonslayer .
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564,571 | 102,816 | 134,847 | 6 |
A fun , disposable sci-fi flick
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I'm not a fan of Vin Diesel . His ego has inflated to a size his talent cannot match . He's better off in smaller movies and in smaller roles . I refuse to watch utter crap like xXx or A Man Apart but he's better than average in Pitch Black . He plays Richard B . Riddick , a convict for massive , infinite crimes that are never defined in the slightest way . This was probably done to add mystery but I say it's bad writing . He's being transported on a spaceship on his way to spacejail but the ship crashes on a desert planet ( as the original series of Star Trek proved , most planets are deserts ) and he escapes . But hold on , the planet is just entering an extended eclipse that only happens every 22 years . And when pitch blackness falls upon the nameless rock zillions of hungry bat-type thingies come out of hibernation to gobble-up whoever they can . So guess who the motely crew of survivors call on to help them . Most of the film is simply going through the motions of killing the characters off one by one and it's nothing new . Sure it distracts one's attention for 110 minutes but it's nothing new or astonishing . The best thing about the film is the presence of Keith David . Let's be honest , the man is 10 different kinds of cool . And he acts Mr Silly Voice off the screen very easily . The DVD is in 2 . 35 : 1 anamorphic widescreen with Dolby / DTS 5 . 1 sound and a bunch of extras I simply do not care about .
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564,533 | 102,816 | 340,855 | 6 |
Sympathy for the devil
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Though this film is brutally honest about Aileen ' Lee ' Wuornos ' crimes it does provoke some sympathy for her . Yes , she does kill many people ( all men ) but when you consider how many men battered her and raped her all through her life , even as a child , it's no surprise she became so psychotic . And I don't think it's exactly fair that she got the death penalty . Surely it would have been best to help a woman who lived her entire existence in the dregs of society ( which is surely to blame for sending her mad ) than executing her . Focusing entirely on Lee instead of the police investigations following her ( there is a TV movie from the mid-90s that does exactly this if you're more interested ) , we see her straggle from thinking about suicide , hooking up with lonely , naive Selby ( Christina Ricci ) , killing in self-defense and finally killing for revenge / money . Charlize Theron completely vanishes as she brings her take on Lee ( her full name is never mentioned in the film ) to the screen . She sure deserved her Academy Award and Christina Ricca ( who is very cute here ) is also very good . However , for a lesbian couple I just didn't see any real feeling between them . It annoyed me how fast the film moved and there are not really many quiet moments for these two characters to bond in any way . Yes , they proclaim their love for each other but I just didn't see it . There was too much shouting and screaming . There are no surprises in the film , as we all know how it ends anyway . But some of Lee's killings are harsh , compelling and even ironic . The overall effect of the film isn't so long-lasting on me though . It's shot and lit like a TV movie and Lee's heavy judgment at the end of the film is played down . For a film that is slightly biased to her point of view it's annoying that her unfair trial and life are not exploited just a little bit more for us to gain a little extra insight into the making of a ' monster ' . Keep a lookout for Kane Hodder as an undercover cop near the end . The DVD is in 1 . 85 : 1 anamorphic widescreen with Dolby / DTS 5 . 1 sound and some slight extras .
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563,926 | 102,816 | 43,341 | 6 |
Seen it already .
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In this short Bugs Bunny joins the circus as an acrobatic bunny and enrages Bruno the Bear , the circus ' main attraction . Bruno proceeds to humiliate Bugs , opening Pandora's box . Because you do NOT mess with Bugs . Much like the earlier High Diving Hare , the laughs in this short come from the various ways Bugs can make Bruno fall from high heights by outsmarting him . It's a bit too much of a deja vu . Plus Bruno the Bear isn't really a formidable adversary and Bugs all too easily tricks him into stupidness . Bugs has been funnier than this .
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564,083 | 102,816 | 424,345 | 6 |
Mercifully scaled down
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Look , I'll be honest with you . I think that Kevin Smith is the anti-Christ . His films in recent years have been dismal . I found Dogma to be one of the worst movies ever and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back was made to appeal to the lucrative stoner / Generation X market who think that films like this are ' da bomb ' . Sigh , I remember the days when people actually spoke correct English and we really need another World War to thin out their ranks a little . The aforementioned movies only make them believe it's funny to be hopeless losers that they are . It seems that Kevin Smith is incapable of writing a movie that isn't soaked in f-words or pee and fart jokes . Clerks II is NO exception , but he's reined in the stupidity and added enough real human drama to make it bearable for the rest of us . The store from the first movie has burnt down due to Randal's incompetence and he and Dante are forced to work in Mooby's , a Cow-themed fast-food restaurant with the lovely Becky ( the utterly gorgeous Rosario Dawson , who I would do 86 ways ) and Elias an ultra-Christian who seems to be an exaggerated cross between Rod AND Tod Flanders . I imagined the whole movie would be nothing more than them having inane conversations and swearing a lot while Jay and Silent Bob sell weed to the kiddies in the parking lot . And while we do get this there was , surprisingly , a bit of real story in there too . Dante is about to get married to a gorgeous woman who adores him ( but only because she has given up on the shallow , good-looking men ) and is leaving NJ forever the next day for sunny Florida . Despite the fact that their lives go nowhere , Randal really doesn't want him to go and would-be true-love Becky tries to convince him that he's fooling himself . It's the dilemma of finally being able to move on in life with a future of mock-happiness or making the most of what's right in front of you that elevates this higher than the crude JASBST and the wildly over-rated Dogma . But don't think for a minute that this film will not have extensive conversations on ass-to-mouth ( Becky likes it ! ! ! ) , comparisons of Star Wars to Lord of the Rings ( or Nerd vs Nerd in other words ) or arguments of non-racist racist words ( Porchmonkey ? Never heard of it ! ) or a man raping a donkey for the viewing pleasure of drunken idiots . And do look out for the ' Who's Your Buddy ' Jesus on Jay's T-shirt . Although he does write some good scenes and his work in comic-books is brilliant ( Bluntman and Chronic , read it ! ) I ' m still not convinced of Smith's ability as a director . One superficial and completely pointless dance number doesn't make up for the endless static shots of inside a fast-food joint , but at the very least it's slicker and more professional than Dogma , a film I will never forgive for its infinite rubbishness .
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564,492 | 102,816 | 62,512 | 6 |
The dumbest Bond plot of all .
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Bond fakes his death to become a ninja and stop SPECTRE from profiting from WWIII after a series of space-jackings . What the hell ? There's not many actions scenes . Sure there's the helicopter dogfight and a couple of chases . But not much else . Women are objects , fisticuffs are plentiful and plot developments hokey . YOLT has not a chance in hell of being taken seriously . I mean what's the deal with that big metal space shark that gobbles up US and Soviet rockets ? The physics of it coming back down to earth standing straight up are laughable . And of course , the bad guy lair just HAS to be in an active / inactive volcano . And nobody knows it's there even though it must have taken a million men and 86 gillion parts to build . But never mind about that . Like before , the finale has all of Blofeld's men ( that's the ORIGINAL Dr . Evil for all you kiddies ) dressed in the same colored outfit fight the good guys , who are dressed in a different colored outfit . So it's really easy for brain-dead audiences to tell who's winning amid the incredibly fake fighting and blowing up . Between the mind , short-lived and sporadic action scenes , Bond does loads of plodding around , investigating , making minor discoveries . Not much excites or interests . It does have pretty photography and some nice scenery . But , in my opinion , it's a below average Bond adventure .
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563,966 | 102,816 | 60,837 | 6 |
Hold your applause
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In this cartoon the Pink Panther is practising his own theme on a violin at home . He fancies himself as a bit of a professional musician and sneaks into a grand concert of Beethoven's 5th Symphony . His various attempts at hijacking the orchestra into playing The Pink Panther theme fall flat as the overzealous conductor goes crazy at him . The jokes mainly come from them outsmarting each other . Only some of them are imaginative but the rest is not that funny . A pretty average cartoon overall , I'm afraid . In the end , after his theme takes over , the only person in the audience is Henry Mancini . Who is obviously applauding .
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564,133 | 102,816 | 60,836 | 6 |
A punch in the belly
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The Pink Panther has invented some kind of pink cocktail and is making a presentation of how wonderful it is . But a green asterisk has planted itself upon his logo and refuses to budge . Obviously peeved at such interference with such an annoying thing that lessens the ' pinkness ' of his punch the asterisk and Pinky resort to an imaginative war of wits that usually ends up with Pinky changing color or being beaten up by the asterisk's older brother ( or something ) . Eventually he gives up and his diluted green punch just ends up tasting rancid . It's a very strange premise for a cartoon but it is actually quite funny with some amusing gags .
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564,588 | 102,816 | 267,248 | 6 |
Worth one viewing only
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I liked this movie . It portrayed teenagers and college students in a far more subdued manner than normal and didn't animate any characters to the point of stupidity ( IE Stifler is not in this movie and no one ' does it ' with a dog covered in wedding cake ) . Almost everyone in is disconnected in some way and have feelings that do not show . It's a character driven movie that works thanks to delicate acting and atmospheric direction . I found the strobing scene to be particularly interesting , especially in retrospect now that I know the ( pretty surprising ) plot twist . Katie Holmes , though not remarkable , gives her role enough life to make the movie work but still cannot separate from her Dawson's Creek part . Only as the movie draws to a close does she really provoke any emotion from the audience . It's a difficult character to play but she just about makes it . The script is pretty weak but it's delivered in a deliberately empty way . We almost feel abandoned watching it . The movie is sparsely populated and makes us feel alone . It creates an interesting atmosphere that is the movie's saving grace . Without this edge it would be a waste of time . It's worth a rent , but only for viewing alone . The DVD has Audio commentary by Director / Writer Stephan Gaghan and Cinematographer Matthew Libatique , brief documentary , Deleted scenes with Director's commentary and a trailer . It is presented in 2 . 35 : 1 anamorphic widescreen and is in Dolby 5 . 1 .
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564,402 | 102,816 | 818,506 | 6 |
Disappointing
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I was so looking forward to this game , with the great reviews and cool-looking graphics and all . But I honestly can't see what all the fuss is about . For a start , the game is just too damn short and too damn easy with nothing much to make you continue playing . I don't buy into all this ' unlockable ' crap and the bonus stuff in New Super Mario Bros . isn't all that interesting anyway . I'm not going to waste my time doing over a level I have already completed just for the sake of unlocking a new background . Only a sad , pathetic loser would do something like that . And the so-called ' ton ' of mini-games is a bold-faced lie since most of them are the exact same ones featured on Super Mario 64 DS and only about 2 aren't . There's only about half the amount featured on SM64 DS too . So there's another wasted opportunity . Maybe it's because I played this so soon after the GBA version of SMB3 or maybe it's because it's just so damn short and never really gets going , but I was just so let down by New Super Mario Bros . The giant Mario thing is cool but it lasts for 5 seconds . I do wish the flying ability from SMB3 was featured . Or that the game was simply worth the money . Don't believe the hype . Only pick this game up cheap ! Graphics A Sound Gameplay Lasting Appeal
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563,871 | 102,816 | 33,671 | 6 |
Waste of money
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In that cartoon Donald Duck is visiting some kind of fair ground and stumbles upon a penny arcade . Inside he spots one of those slide-show machines with a film of Daisy stripping . He puts in his 1c only for the machine to break down before Daisy gets naked . Next he tries his luck at one of those awful claw-grab machines only for it to totally not work ( come on , they NEVER work ) . Which , only irritates him further . Finally , Donald comes upon a model plane on a gimble rig . For 1c it looks like a lot of fun and Donald sure enjoys mimicking a fighter plane . But thew ride only lasts for a few seconds . Angry , Donald bashes the plane which soon malfunctions and goes mental on him . Funnier than it sounds , honest .
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564,599 | 102,816 | 364,751 | 6 |
Not quite sh ! t creek !
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Tom , Jerry ( ! ) , Billy and Dan are four young kids who fantasise about going on a treasure hunting adventure in the wilderness of the Pacific Northwest . A legendary rascal called D B Cooper has botched a million dollar heist and left the money in the mountains . The kids make a pact that some day , somehow , they will find that money . Years later , Billy is killed in an accident and the rest reunite for his funeral . Tom ( Dax Shepard ) is now a sleaze , who cannot hold a steady job to save himself . Jerry ( Matthew Lillard ) is bored to death in a dull office and by a nagging girlfriend and Dan ( Seth Green ) has become a very wimpy doctor . Their childhood sense of curiosity and adventure has been extinguished . That is until they happen upon D B Cooper's treasure map in their old tree house gang hut . Desperate for one last act of stupidity before acknowledging their thirties , the trio sets off on a rafting / camping trip , with D B's treasure as their ultimate goal . Of course , many obstacles and disasters prevent them from getting there so easily . Sounds like a grown-up Goonies ? It is . And it's loads of fun . Without A Paddle is funny and exciting , with non-stop action and set pieces . Great widescreen photography , pretty scenery and a particularly gentle score make for perfect escapism . There is not one second of boredom . Shepard , Green and Lillard ( as always ) are brilliant together . Chemistry is difficult to conjure up with three main characters , but they pull it off perfectly . As an Indiana Jones-lite coming-of-age comedy , with the tiniest bit of character drama , Without A Paddle succeeds in every area . But not really a film you would want to watch again .
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564,607 | 102,816 | 30,070 | 6 |
Little horrors
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While enjoying a calm , stress-free day , Donald is sent a postcard from his sister Dumbella , saying that her sons Huey , Duey and Louie will be coming to stay for a while . Now these are not the well behaved kids from Duck Tales that you might be used to . No , they are little rapscallions who proceed to do nothing but lay waste to Donald's house . Donald desperately tries to keep them under control and even consults a child psychiatry book in a futile attempt to maintain order . It doesn't work and only inspires them to torment him further . This cartoon is proof that Donald's sole purpose in his existence is to live it in a state of perpetual rage .
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