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384,531 | 391,152 | 120,735 | 1 |
Quite possibly the worst film ever made
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This movie is so bad , it is an insult to all those films it ripped off , particularly Reservoir Dogs , which I didn't even like all that much anyway . I know the director claimed that he never saw any of Tarantino's films , and it actually shows in just how terrible Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels was . Let's see , take four or five white guys who look more or less exactly the same , write an overly complicated crime plot , make it as violent as possible , presto , you can impress people with low iqs .
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385,154 | 391,152 | 116,059 | 1 |
Most appropriate title ever
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More thought should have gone into the title for this film . They had to have known it was awful when they were making it . I saw it because I was a fan of Kinnear's from his Talk Soup days . It is absolutely worthless , though , other than one transcendent moment : Rue McClanahan , Blanche from the Golden Girls , is going blind , and her son , Kinnear , makes her feel Coolio's face as a joke . It's not funny . It's just bizarre .
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385,390 | 391,152 | 1,091,617 | 1 |
If I . D . proponents were hoping to look smart by making this movie , boy are they crazy !
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It's common knowledge that actor and game show host Ben Stein was a speechwriter for President Richard Nixon , but does anyone know if he was a good speechwriter ? Judging from his new documentary , Expelled , which argues that the discussion of intelligent design is barred from academia , Stein couldn't hold an argument with a mute clown . The film jumps all over the place with its ideas , setting up and knocking down the most obvious of strawmen and making leaps of logic , making him about as coherent as a schizophrenic homeless man . And , man , is he obnoxious about it . Imagine Michael Moore with a megaphone , pressed against your ear . Stein questions his allies with faux disbelief , and his foes with raging cynicism . The film begins with a montage of professors , academics and journalists who claim to have been fired for their belief in intelligent design . What evidence does Stein have ? Their word , and that's all he needs to believe them . To make it look more official in the film , there have been documents typed up giving reasons , but these are pretty clearly unofficial documents , not the actual pink slips , and we're only shown selected , highlighted words from them anyway , so there's no way to judge for ourselves . The I . D . proponents claim vehemently that their purpose is not to insert religion into scientific discussions , but Stein harps on the atheism of his enemies , and even goes so far as to point out the word " Creator " in the preamble of the Constitution . In other segments , Stein interviews evolutionary biologists , asks them leading questions and gives each of them a total of about 20 seconds of screen time to answer while Stein sits there widening his eyes at them in fake disbelief . Not once does he bring together an I . D . supporter and an accredited scientist and have them discuss the subject at any length . The only scientist who gets any more than a moment of screen time is the infamous Richard Dawkins . Yeah , we all know he is kind of a jerk . Purportedly the filmmakers had to cut his interview to pieces to make him look worse , or so Dawkins claims . You have to believe him , considering how much the rest of the film cheats . To add insult to injury , Stein comes to the conclusion that Charles Darwin and those who uphold his theories are the reason the Holocaust happened . He's quite far off by this point , if you couldn't tell . His original premise is that I . D . proponents had been expelled from academia . That may be true . If he had asked one of the evolutionary scientists why that was and let him answer without interrupting , they would have basically concluded that I . D . is not worth discussing because it does not provide an argument . Expelled itself provides no real argument , either , and should definitely be expelled from the ranks of cinema . There is no competition for the worst movie of 2008 .
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385,302 | 391,152 | 71,571 | 1 |
Give me an L ! Give me an A ! Give me an M ! And give me and E ! What does that spell ?
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LAME ! This movie is incredibly lame ! Before the car chase begins , the story makes no sense whatsoever . I was sitting there waiting for the famed car chase , yawning a bit . And then it came . And then , forty grueling minutes later , it was over . If I were not watching it with a friend , I would have turned it off about ten minutes through the chase . If I just could have fallen asleep ! Really , I'm not against car chases . But there was no reason to care about anything that happened in this movie . Did the characters even have names in this movie ? I don't remember . If you're the kind of person who likes car chases a lot , all three Mad Max movies have chases that are a thousand times more exciting than the ones in Gone in 60 Seconds . There are characters we care about , and the stunts are innovative . The ones in this movie are repetitive and uninventive and unrealistic . So really the only reason to watch this movie is to see muscle cars from the 60s and 70s , and if you're that type of person , you should just be slapped back and forth in the face for eternity . Absolutely one of the biggest wastes of time ever made , devoid of anything remotely worthwhile .
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385,565 | 391,152 | 119,711 | 1 |
Art for dummies
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If Andrei Tarkovsky had been a hack , he would have directed Mother and Son instead of Mirror . This is the single most pretentious film made anywhere in the world , I am convinced . A son , without a name , takes care of his mother , without a name . They love each other , I guess . No , they don't , I'm sure . These aren't characters . They aren't even actors playing characters . At least it could be pretty , but even the nature seems ridiculously touched up and changed wherever it was necessary with a Macintosh computer . And could Sokurov have come up with a technique as hackneyed as a distorted aspect ration ? You would have to have been born yesterday to buy this garbage . .
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385,620 | 391,152 | 395,699 | 1 |
Godawful !
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Egads ! There probably won't be a worse movie than this in 2005 . If there is , I hope to God I miss it . Vin Diesel stars as a Navy SEAL assigned to take care of some dead operative's kids and find a secret location in their home . The plot is ludicrous and completely illogical . No one acts like a real human being . The only funny thing in the film is when the little girl asks Diesel if her boobs will ever be as big as his . Diesel is painful to watch ? when Vin Diesel looks embarrassed for being in a movie , you know it's bad . Some of the children show some talent . I especially think Max Thieriot as the oldest kid has a future ; he co-starred in the movie Catch That Kid last year . Hopefully he'll land some decent roles in the near future . Brad Garrett , the very funny guy who plays the brother on Everybody Loves Raymond , has a particularly creepy role ? he seems like a pedophile working as vice principal . The script of The Pacifier was written by Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant , the creators and two of the stars of Comedy Central's brilliant Reno 911 . Well , I guess it's no big deal if they pollute the minds of idiots when they give back so much . They also wrote the recent theatrical release Herbie : Fully Loaded . I actually fell asleep for the final 15 or 20 minutes . My mind just shut down , and I thank Jebus for it .
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385,755 | 391,152 | 424,823 | 2 |
God awful
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I can never wrap my head around the careers of Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant . On television , their work is some of the best comedy of the past couple of decades : The State , Viva Variety ! , and , their triumph , Comedy Central's Reno 911 . But when they write movies , the results are well nigh unwatchable . I had thought in the past that they were just defecating cheap movie scripts so that they could make money and continue producing fine work on television . I mean , The Pacifier , Herbie : Fully Loaded and Night at the Museum smack of the kind of audience-despising material you might expect from smart writers deliberately trying to dumb down their work for some cold hard cash . Add to that the fact that their movie version of Reno 911 , which was released early in 2007 , was pretty good . But then , later in the year , they made this film . It's a cheesy little comedy , and it has a lot of potential to be decent , if unremarkable , fun . This is their genre , unlike the children's flicks . There's no conceivable reason to hate your audience here , since presumably they'll be pretty close to the same audience that watches Reno 911 . Dan Fogler plays a former child prodigy and Olympic table tennis player . Now he's a loser , but he's being recruited by the FBI to infiltrate an underground ping-pong tournament , hosted by an international criminal , played by Christopher Walken . The premise , reminiscent of other recent underground sports comedies like Dodgeball and Beerfest , doesn't have a lot of promise , it's true . But all a comedy really needs is some good jokes , and it'll fly . Or at least you'd think it would . The problem with Balls of Fury isn't exactly its jokes . They're funny enough , for the most part . It's the delivery . The actors have little ability in comic timing ( what halfway decent comedic director would willfully hire George Lopez to be in their movie ? ) , and Robert Ben Garant often fails to sell the jokes , even when they are potentially amusing . Even when the comic performances are good , as is the case with Walken and co-writer Thomas Lennon himself , the editing is so poor that the gags almost never hit . It's all quite maddening . Reno 911 is particularly brilliant in its editing . I really don't see how the same people could produce such a laughless comedy . I guess TV is just their medium , but I don't understand why film-making should prove so difficult for them .
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385,613 | 391,152 | 372,873 | 2 |
The Koreans give us an Uwe Boll movie
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Completely retarded Lord of the Rings rip-off , supposedly based on a Korean legend . The movie was made by Koreans , but it was aimed at American audiences . Please let this not be a trend . This is one of the most inept films I've ever sat through . Dull , terribly edited and directed , with an incomprehensible plot and just plain bad CGI monsters . There are times when this reaches the coveted so-bad-it's-good level , but it takes way too long to get to the titular war . When that starts happening , it's laughable and entertaining ( for all the wrong reasons , of course ) . The two leads are utterly boring . Jason Behr in particular seems like the homeless man's Skeet Ulrich . And it's pretty sad that they kill off the cute minority girl ( Aimee Garcia ) and keep around the homely white chick ( Amanda Brooks ) to be the heroine . It's kind of sad in general that Korean filmmakers would have their legendary heroes reincarnated as faux-hot white people . I guess they were thinking they knew their audience . But then again , they don't . Why would anyone feel Americans would like to sit through a movie where their military gets decimated by a bunch of lizards ? I think even war supporters are more than a little sick of seeing soldiers die , and more soldiers die in the approximately 20 minute-long D-War than have died in the Iraq War . There's one awful ( ly humorous ) scene where a pilot flies his helicopter into a skyscraper . We see the man jump out of the copter , as if he's going to escape , but , no , KABLOOEY ! I feel sorry for all the nobodies who had to appear in this movie . Sure , they got a pay check , but who would really want to put this on their resumé ? I particularly feel sorry for character actor and Oscar nominee Robert Forster . He clearly got paid the most for his appearance , seeing as he's the most recognizable face . I know character actors do whatever comes their way , but there is the occasional time when you should choose to retain your dignity .
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385,424 | 391,152 | 277,371 | 2 |
A very poor movie indeed
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The film is supposed to make fun of lame teenage comedies like She's All That , American Pie , even back to The Breakfast Club ( although I kind of like that one ) . Why ? Those are comedies in the first place . If a comedy is unfunny , then what are the chances that its spoof will be funny ? There are maybe one or two small laughs in the proceedings . The opening scene , where the main character is caught playing with herself by first her father , then her brother , then her grandparents , and then her priest is pretty amusing , if foul . That's probably the least disgusting joke of the whole film ! The younger boys are pretty funny . Cody McMains , who plays the main character's little brother Mitch , looks like he might be Judd Nelson's son , especially in the homage to The Breakfast Club . The ' token black guy ' is pretty funny . When the characters all go to a party , he has to approach another black guy who has showed up first . ' Excuse me , I am the black guy in this movie . ' ' Oh , sorry , ' the other black guy replies , ' my mistake . ' Mr . T and Molly Ringwald appear in truly uninspired cameos ( do teenagers even know who they are ? ) . Melissa Joan Hart , the star of She's All That , appears , probably to inspire nostalgia from the uber-young audience . I'm just normal young , and I'll always think of her as Clarissa . .
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384,641 | 391,152 | 300,051 | 2 |
Terrible !
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I've always liked Kevin Smith , if not a lot , but I never imagined he would sink so low . He completely co-opts his talents to make a romantic comedy so sickly sweet that I thought my eyes were going to stick in the back of my head . Ben Affleck gives a performance that should effectively torpedo what's left of his flagging career , and Liv Tyler , while cute as ever , makes you wish that Jennifer Lopez hadn't died in the film's first ten minutes . Smith uses every cheap rom-com convention in the book . He probably thinks he's doing a send-up of the genre , but nothing feels subversive . The little girl , Raquel Castro , is adorable , especially during the climactic music sequence . I don't think I cracked a smile more than once during the movie . The worst I've seen so far in 2004 . .
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385,520 | 391,152 | 276,033 | 2 |
Gag !
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The reason I always get so ped off at those who demand that all the imdb ratings they give average out to 5 . 5 ( or , if their math skills are poor , 5 ) is because I am rather sure that most people are smart enough to avoid movies like The Country Bears , thus missing the type of movies that would make a Bell Curve remotely possible . The reason my own vote history averages out to a high 7 . 5 is because I can see a preview for a movie like this and say ' I'm never going to see this movie . ' However , once in a while , I just have to bite the bullet and watch an awful movie . As long as it's short , how bad can it hurt ? I usually watch these kinds of movies with my brother , who has a far less refined taste in movies than myself . I'm sure he sat down to watch this particular movie to see just how bad it could be ( he rented it for his two and a half year old ) . And , oh lord , is it terrible . I don't know if I've ever heard lamer jokes delivered with worse timing . Some of the jokes might have even been funny if the actors cared whatsoever , but they really don't . Celebrities pop up in thankless cameos . You'd think Brian Setzer would know better . Christopher Walken tries hard to make something out of his role as the villain , who wants to knock down Country Bear Hall really bad ( his hood ornament is a wrecking ball ) . The script is far too awful to allow him even a decent moment . Alex Rocco , Moe Green from the first Godfather movie , wears his hideous red wig and acts like he wants another bullet in the eyeball . The actual Country Bears wouldn't have been impressive when I was a kid ; they made me long for the live action Ninja Turtles . Haley Joel Osment is lucky he didn't actually have to appear in the movie . My brother and I spent most of the movie fiercely debating whether the man who drove the Country Bear tour bus was played by Ted Nugent . Dammit , I lost the bet . I should have known Mr . Nugent had more integrity than that ( for the record , Queen Latifah , Elton John , Bonnie Raitt , Don Henley , Wyclef Jean , and Willie Nelson do not ) . ( why 2 and not 1 ? Well , I liked a couple of the songs and that Krystal chick is hot ) .
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384,996 | 391,152 | 3,489 | 2 |
SPOILERS , although I promise you that you won't care
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This couldn't have even been popular in its day . It's incredibly incompetent . I can forgive the total lack of cinematic devices . This is , after all , pre-Griffith . But there's no imagination in the film whatsoever , not a wink of it . In fact , the novel on which it's based was written by a total idiot . Only one character in the film has a Roman name , despite it taking place in Pompeii , and the name that that one man has is of a family that had been extinct for a couple of decades by the time that the film takes place , in the last few days before the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE . To this film , anyone wearing a bedsheet counts as a Roman . In this melodrama , prominent man falls in love with one woman on the same day as he buys a blind , female slave away from an abusive mistress . The blind slave is so grateful that she quickly falls in love with him , stumbling after him with arms outstretched as he takes his fianceé for a walk . The blind girl goes to the priest of Isis , who gives her a potion purported to be a love potion , but really a potion that causes insanity ( I don't recall why he particularly hates the guy ) . The blind girl poisons the guy , the priest frames the guy for murder . The priest locks the blind girl in a dungeon , and the guy is sentenced to be eaten by lions . In the film's only decent sequence , the blind girl fools the slave left behind to protect her by performing a bogus magic trick and then stealing his keys when he is unaware . She goes to save the guy , but then , right before the soldiers can feed him to the lions , there is a very angry deus ex machina as Vesuvius begins to erupt . The citizens of Pompeii run around in circles , flailing their arms , not even attempting to escape . The blind girl leads the insane guy to a boat ( ? ! ) but he and the other people leaving in the boat just leave her behind to be engulfed in lava . The film is worthless , although , nearer the end , it does start to become unintentionally funny . However , it's not near funny enough to warrent any sort of recommendation . This should have been lost with the multitude of other silents that were being made at the time . .
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385,759 | 391,152 | 127,349 | 2 |
One of the worst films of the past few years
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I can't believe the amount of positive comments on this film . It is poorly directed , acted and written . It wants to be a love story , but the relationship is unbelievable . The characters themselves are inconsistent and live only in a script . The politics are pathetic - it's like the screenwriter heard some stuff about political activism in the late 60s and early 70s . The sex scenes are exploitative and downright embarrassing . The two lead actors , both great elsewhere , are pathetic here , especially Connely and her Southern accent . But you can't blame them . They didn't write down this awful and pretentious dialogue . I wish I could find a quotation , but the critics have wisely not quoted a single thing from the film in their reviews . Oh yeah , there's the thing about " I need you like I have a thousand monkeys on my back . " What the hell kind of romantic imagery is this ? If this is the kind of stuff you find touching , hey , you're a lost cause . I would give it a , but I'd feel guilty . You see , I didn't have the patience to finish it , but turned the VCR off instead after an hour . Wait , so is she a ghost or is she alive ? Who the hell cares ? .
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385,018 | 391,152 | 382,625 | 3 |
Critics were right : it stinks , big time !
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The critical reaction to this film was just vile , but then a lot of normal people who saw it afterward said , " Nah , it's pretty good . " I'm here to tell you that the initial critical reception was right on the money for this one . It's God-awful . A symbologist and a cryptologist ( two fields of study which probably do exist , I suppose , but sound awfully made-up ) get framed for murder and get caught up in an ages-old clash between factions of the Catholic church . The movie mostly consists of the two scholars ( Tom Hanks and Audrey Tautou ) racing from one locale to another solving riddles and puzzles , and just barely escaping the cops and the villains each time . The puzzles are reminiscent of the ones the Riddler produced on the 1960s Batman show : they're completely inane ; no one could ever solve them , certainly not the audience . But somehow the heroes figure it all out in a matter of seconds . It's about as much fun as watching someone do a Sudoku when you don't know the rules . And the characters are as paper-thin as they could possibly be . I had absolutely zero involvement with them or their adventure . Dan Brown's novel is famously terrible , and , while I've often heard cinema improves his painful prose , after watching this film I shiver to think what actually reading him feels like . If the plot weren't enough to convince me , the dialogue is terrible . The actors are all only here for the fat paycheck . Hanks in particular seems completely dissatisfied with the part . Possibly the worst movie of the year .
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385,882 | 391,152 | 105,201 | 3 |
Awful
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A really bad little film from Cameroon , one of the sloppiest I've ever seen . The plot concerns a teenage girl who wants to be a man . A witch changes her , and then he spends the rest of the movie trying to get laid . It's riddled with many annoying penis jokes . The script doesn't even remember that the guy used to be a girl . It's as poorly edited as I've ever seen , and every decent part of it is ripped off from Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing . .
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384,931 | 391,152 | 258,100 | 3 |
I'm a Mr . Show fan , and this definitely sucks
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This film is based on characters from the mid-to-late ' 90s HBO sketch comedy show Mr . Show , which starred Bob Odenkirk and David Cross . Mr . Show , which I just rewatched in its entirety in the past couple of weeks , has a reputation as being one of the best sketch comedy shows ever . Personally , I wouldn't rank it anywhere near as high as many others . It was far more hit-and-miss than its fans like to believe . For every great sketch , you'd have to suffer through at least one completely lame sketch . That said , when the show did hit upon something good , it was truly memorable . And the Ronnie Dobbs sketches , of which there were two in the show's 30 episode run , are definitely a couple of the best they did . This movie basically retells the Ronnie Dobbs sketches over 90 minutes . And , as Saturday Night Live has proved again and again , what works in 5 minute segments doesn't stretch out well to 90 minutes . But even most of SNL's movies surpass this one ( although not It's Pat ! ) . This movie is incredibly unfunny . The only thing that works ? kind of ? are a couple of the songs that pop up occasionally . The only other Mr . Show characters that appear in the film are the members of R & B group 3 x 1 ? 1 , and that little music video they do was one of the few tolerable things in the movie . Jack Black , who appeared in several episodes of Mr . Show , gets a funny little non-sequitur song that's supposed to have been cut from a Mary Poppins-like movie . And the fat kid action sequence was slightly amusing . The only performer who is consistently entertaining is SNL's David Koechner , who , IMO , is one of the most underrated of SNL performers . Other than that , the film is terrible . Even Bob & David have disowned it , so I would suggest that even fans of the show should just ignore its existence .
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385,374 | 391,152 | 204,495 | 3 |
Nonsensical
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This is quite an awful film , directed by an allegedly famous Brazilian director , Paulo Cezar Saraceni , and starring several actors really popular in that country . To me , the direction seemed terribly amateurish ( the editing even moreso ) and the actors seemed too good to be acting in pornography . It is a biopic of Natal da Portela who established the first Samba School in Rio de Janeiro . After watching this film , I have only the vaguest notions of what a Samba School is ( those notions solely provided by the Q & A session after the film ) . The character presented on screen is different in every scene . The only character trait that was well established is that he had one arm . The film vaguely tells us how he lost his arm . The drama doesn't work , the comedy works even worse . At least there's some good music once in a while . It wants to be a musical , I think , but I don't think they could afford to make it one . I liked the documentary scenes of Carnival at the film's end . I doubt Americans will have many chances to see this film , anyways . If the chance arises , avoid it like the plague . The music is nice and there are some pretty colors . That's all . Rent Black Orpheus instead , I implore you ! .
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384,600 | 391,152 | 70,290 | 3 |
A really terrible movie
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The story is good enough : two sailors are ordered to take a younger sailor from Virginia to New Hampshire to a brig . There he'll serve eight years for a ridiculously minor offence , trying to steal $40 from a charity box . On the way there , they try to show him a good times and have some adventures . But the style of the film seems very amateurish . The sound feels like Ashby really wanted to copy Robert Altman's revolutionary soundtracks , but it just doesn't work . The characters mutter all the time and often I couldn't understand what they were saying . Luckily , I rarely cared . The dialogue seems like it was improvised . Often the characters would stumble through lines , as if they weren't sure what to say next . Some of the dialogue resembles that of the Blair Witch Project : when the actors didn't know what else to say , they just swore . Well , I guess they are supposed to be sailors . Jack Nicholson has never been so obnoxious , nor ever as bad . I despised his character more than any other I can think of offhand . Otis Young has almost nothing to do in the film . Randy Quaid is pretty good , but , if indeed it was improvised , he has an easy job as an extremely shy and dumb fellow . I don't know what the hell Hal Ashby was thinking when he did this one . He's no master filmmaker , of course , but , in his own charming , sloppy way , he made two of my favorite films : Harold & Maude and Bound for Glory . .
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384,565 | 391,152 | 66,492 | 3 |
A movie based on a costume from 2001 that someone found in the garbage
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Joan Crawford's infamously bad swan song , the story of an anthropologist ( Crawford ) who makes a study of a missing link , whom she dubs " Trog " ( short for " troglodyte " ) . The film is extremely cheap and cheesy . Hey , I like extremely cheap and cheesy . If it were only that , I probably would love the movie . But what makes the movie bad is its slow pace . People talk interminably about stupid things , and the boredom sets in and never leaves . The scenes where Trog and Crawford play ball are the very definition of camp , and I would have much preferred Trog's final rampage to last 80 % of the film's run . So , due to boredom , this truly is a terrible movie . It may be bad , but I still liked it more than Love Story , which was released the same year .
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385,906 | 391,152 | 305,669 | 3 |
Painfully lame comedy
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Man , who allows scripts like this to be made into movies ? Is it really that funny to hear a Jewish guy speak in black slang and an old white guy pretend he's African American ? Why didn't they just put Steve Martin in blackface ? This film is far more offensive than Al Jolson singing ' Mammy , ' let me tell you . I feel so embarrassed for Martin . He's far too talented to be appearing in sht like this . Queen Latifah provides some of the energy that should have been in the script , but she doesn't have the talent to save this train wreck . This film was very successful , but I beg you , Hollywood , please don't shove a sequel down our throats . You can't blame the executives , however . The audience is directly culpable for dreck like this , and every single person who gave this film a dime should feel ashamed . .
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384,859 | 391,152 | 403,358 | 3 |
Simply terrible !
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The most expensive film ever made in Russia . And what a tremendous waste of money it was , too ! It's a fantasy / horror flick about ? I don't know , something , I guess . Some people called " Others " exist among humanity . There are light Others and dark Others , and they apparently keep the world in balance . The mythology of the film and its plot are largely incoherent . The film's star is seriously lacking in charisma . There are some cool visuals , but , like the worst Hollywood blockbusters , it's all overbearing . And , better yet , this is only the first installment of a trilogy ! Well , count me out for parts 2 & 3 . This is the worst film I've seen in some time .
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384,704 | 391,152 | 449,059 | 3 |
What the . . . Terrible !
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I don't know where to begin with this one . It starts off well enough , and goes on that way for fifty minutes or so . Never great , I'd say , but it's a perfectly acceptable little indie comedy . Alan Arkin and Steve Carell are both excellent , and Toni Collette and Greg Kinnear are fine , too . But then it takes a majorly wrong turn ( think grandma from National Lampoon's Vacation , miscalculated at an astronomical level ) , follows that up with some incredibly forced bits and ends up at one of the most outrageously appalling climaxes I have seen in a long time . I went from moderately enjoying it to downright hating it . It's too bad , too , because I do like some of the things it's trying to say , some of the things it's trying to do . But what a disaster ! I guess I'm the only one who feels that way , though . My movie-going companion ( whose opinion I respect , I should add ) was enamored with the picture all the way through , even laughing uproariously at what I thought were some of the most cringe-inducing moments in some time . It's already ranked on IMDb's top 250 , though that's hardly a sign of high quality . Oh well . I'm happy enough in hating it . Easily the worst I've seen so far this year .
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384,742 | 391,152 | 102,536 | 3 |
Pointless
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I was first introduced to director Jim Jarmusch with Dead Man , and I loathed it . I thought that I had never before seen such an utterly pointless or pretentious movie in my life , and I probably never would again . It was many years later I ventured to watch another Jarmusch film . The second was Stranger Than Paradise and , while I still felt it was fairly pointless , I also felt it had its moments . It was interesting and occasionally aesthetically pleasing . From there , I explored much of the director's filmography , and found a few films that I really liked , foremost among them being Broken Flowers , his most recent . But I'd have to say , the majority of his movies I do find to be rambling exercises in cinematic pointlessness , even if they are sometimes interesting . I even found Dead Man tolerable on the second viewing . Unfortunately , I have come to Night on Earth , and I'm pretty much right back where I started . Following in the footsteps of the pretty good Mystery Train , Jarmusch directed another film with several different stories in it . This one is comprised of five different nighttime cab rides in five different cities , L . A . , New York , Paris , Rome and Helsinki . Basically the film is just about cabbies ' interactions with their customers . But there's little , almost nothing , really , of interest in any of these characters or conversations . Only one of the five sequences I found even remotely worth sitting through , the New York City episode , where the only cab black man Giancarlo Esposito can hail belongs to a German immigrant , Armin Mueller-Stahl , fresh off the boat . He doesn't even know how to drive , so Esposito persuades Mueller-Stahl to let him drive instead . Along the way from Manhattan to Brooklyn , they run into Esposito's sister-in-law , Rosie Perez . As in all the segments , nothing much happens during this cab ride , but I did enjoy the little friendship the two men build in the short time they know each other . Even this one ends horribly , though , with Jarmusch leaving Mueller-Stahl in dire straits . The worst segment by far is the Rome one , where Roberto Benigni plays a sunglasses-at-night kind of driver who loves to talk . He picks up a clergyman who becomes stupefied at the driver's chattering . Jarmusch kind of discovered Benigni in Down by Law , and the guy was almost tolerable there . But here he is so over-the-top that I eventually stopped reading the subtitles . I don't know why I just didn't fast-forward it to the final sequence , as none of the sequences are related anyway . This was definitely one of the more painful movies I've watched of late .
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385,750 | 391,152 | 408,839 | 3 |
Ugly and misogynistic . What happened to the Farrelly Brothers ?
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It's way too bad about the Farrelly Brothers . It looked like they were going to be the great comedians of modern cinema after their first three films , Dumb & Dumber , Kingpin and There's Something about Mary , but all of their subsequent films have been disappointments . Me , Myself and Irene , Shallow Hal , Stuck on You and Fever Pitch were all decent movies , but none of them had the cojones of their first three . They seemed to be getting sweeter , which wouldn't be such a bad thing if they didn't also lose their edge . Well , their new film , The Heartbreak Kid , proves that their edge is completely dulled . Where they were able to combine a certain humanity with the gross-out jokes in a film like There's Something about Mary , it now feels like they are just desperately cramming them into The Heartbreak Kid . None of the dirty jokes work . They're all groan-inducing . Nothing seems more out of place than a Tijuana donkey show . The incongruity of it all isn't even what ruins the movie , unfortunately . It's the way they treat women , or at least one woman , Malin Akerman . Man , does this movie come off as misogynistic . I'm guessing that , in the original film , written by Neil Simon , there's more insight into how bad a person the protagonist is ( there played by Charles Grodin , here by the every day more dire Ben Stiller ) . It doesn't feel like there's much insight into Stiller's character , and I think we're actually supposed to like him and root for him to get into a relationship with the " good girl " , here played by Michelle Monaghan . In the end ( and especially in the end , given the final twist of the film ) , I hated the guy . Akerman comes off as nasty , but Stiller's character doesn't even deserve to get peed on by her .
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385,227 | 391,152 | 477,347 | 3 |
Awful script mucks good idea
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The idea of this was fun and promising : the new night guard at the natural history museum discovers that all the exhibits come to life at night . The previews were even actually amusing . Unfortunately , the script is just painfully awful . It sets up all these rules in this universe and doesn't even try to follow them . It commits the egregious crime of making veteran actors Dick Van Dyke and Mickey Rooney , along with lesser known Bill Cobbs ( he was the magic janitor in The Hudsucker Proxy ) into villains , who , I might add , have little believable motivation for the things they do . What's really funny is that the screenwriters are Thomas Lennon and Ben Garant , who are the creators of the enormously funny television show ( and upcoming movie ) Reno 911 . They apparently slum writing for mainstream movies , and they must think very little of the audience . Their screen writing credits also include the masterpieces The Pacifier , Herbie : Fully Loaded , and Let's Go to Prison . I guess their underestimation must be on the money , though , as my movie-going companions seemed to enjoy it ( they were not children ; and children , for what it's worth , might actually like this okay ) , even through the dozens of plot inconsistencies ( so the wax Teddy Roosevelt isn't really Roosevelt , but Sacajawea is the real Sacajawea ? ) . The script is so bad , there are several loose ends that they forget to tie up , until the end credits , that is . But I was already heading fast for the door and couldn't be bothered to find out if they tidied everything up . Somehow I doubt it .
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384,750 | 391,152 | 241,527 | 3 |
How to take advantage of your children's naivety for the sake of cold cash . . .
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I have , in all my life as a lover of both literature and the cinema , hardly ever come upon a piece of work more unimaginative , more ugly , more uninteresting , more lacking in suspense , more lacking in charm , more greedy , more incoherent . . . Okay , okay . I'll stop with the superlative negatives . Surely there have been worse , and , yes , off the top of my head , I can think of many that are worse . However , for a book that over 125 million people have read , and for a movie that cemented the record for the biggest opening weekend in history , and also for a book that has had not only kids but critics singing its praises , and also for a movie which one particularly fat-headed critic called the Wizard of Oz of its generation , I am more than severely disappointed . I know that , had it not been so overhyped , it would have been just as bad . Now , however , my anger for it is completely hardened and it's going to be a passionate battle for me for years to come . I go into an in depth criticism , but it would be impossible for me to keep to 1000 words . There is hardly a piece of it that I liked . As a film , it was poorly edited , poorly acted ( by most ) , poorly filmed . The only really memorable scene is the troll in the bathroom , although the payoff to it makes no sense whatsoever . The Quidditch game , which has been hyped to all heaven , is completely boring and poorly created . It looks like the FX guys created it with photoshop . When the chess game looked like it was about to be the most exciting sequence in the film , Christopher Columbus , who , I must say , lives up to his reputation completely , begins to edit furiously . I heard afterwards that this was done to avoid a PG-13 . My immediate thought is that the filmmakers didn't trust their young audience to enjoy watching a chess game , no matter how exciting it might have been . I'm still not sure which story to buy . But the person I really want to tear into is J . K . Rowling . What a hack . Never has the word " hack " been more fitting . A former waitress , her idea of imagination is to call things by weird names . Only in the mind of a psychopath ( or idiot ) could the name Draco Malfoy or a Cerberus clone named Fluffy be considered clever . Writing children's literature is not difficult , but this is simply awful . She's clearly ripping off Raoul Dahl like there's no tomorrow , especially in the exposition . The game of Quidditch , which seems to be a drawing point of some sort , is absolutely nonsensical . As a preteen , I invented much more interesting games with much less interesting playing pieces . Quidditch is a game where people score ten points at a time , unless someone catches a special type of ball , which ends the game immediately . So theoretically , the game could end in thirty seconds . And all the other forms of scoring matter not at all . And let's talk about the surprise climax . Really , anyone could have been standing in front of that mirror at the end . It is tremendously unclever . And the penultimate sequence , where the crown is awarded to the best dorm , is anticlimactic and just rude to the children of Slytherin , We only hate one of them , so why should we be happy that the award at first goes to them , and then is cruelly snatched away . And what about Hogwart , anyways ? If you're not supposed to use magic when you're away from Hogwart , why the heck would you want to be a wizard anyways ? Friends , you're well on the path to making your children drooling morons . If they want a great series of books about sorcery and magic creatures , make them read the Chronicles of Narnia by C . S . Lewis . This is the most soulless garbage imaginable . And I thought Shrek had taken that title .
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385,615 | 391,152 | 432,021 | 3 |
First film I saw on Blu Ray . Hi-def doesn't make it any better
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If nothing else , this movie will be a landmark in my film viewing life : it was the first movie I ever saw on Blu Ray ( a buddy bought a Playstation 3 ) . If not for that , I'm sure it'd be one for the dustbin of my memory . Granted , it's hard to judge fairly when I never saw the first two installments of this based-on-a-video game trilogy , but Resident Evil : Extinction can only barely count as a movie . It's a post-apocalyptic zombie movie where a genetically engineered woman with excellent fighting abilities ( model / musician Milla Jovovich ? I refuse to acknowledge her as an actress ) helps a ragtag band of survivors escape to Alaska , while she herself infiltrates the underground layer of the Umbrella Corporation , which created the virus that zombified the rest of the world . The plot is mostly nonexistent . I kind of like the set and costume designs ( sci-fi being every set and costumer designer's favorite gene ) , and the movie's watchable when it focuses on the scenery . But it's an action movie , and , for God's sake , the action sequences are dull . CGI looks even more fake in high definition . The director and / or editor cut madly during these sequences , inducing headaches and making it impossible for you to tell what's going on . It's a pretty worthless film , and let's leave it at that .
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385,929 | 391,152 | 2,898 | 3 |
Of almost no worth
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It's always a tricky thing to adapt great novels into films ( I haven't read it , by the way , but I know of its fame ) . Some filmmakers , well , producers , especially , but also directors , have this notion that if the novel is famous and / or great , the film is liable to be great , too , or , at the very least , profitable . It almost never turns out well . What masterpieces of literature ever made a great film ? To Kill a Mockingbird is probably the best , but that novel's greatness lies in its simplicity ( the film , in my opinion , attains greatness in Gergory Peck's performance more than anything else ) . Generally , if you're going to adapt a novel into a film , you certainly cannot rely on one that relies too heavily on the words ; imagery is necessary . Most great films based on great literature are great because the screenwriters have actually adapted it into something new . Now , think of a great masterpiece of literature adapted into a SILENT film . To boot , a silent film made without the inventions of Birth of a Nation to imbue it with a sense of the cinematic . Germinal is about the most unintersting film I've ever seen . Perhaps its only interest is its similarities to Fritz Lang's Metropolis , enough to make me think Lang liked it , at least . Maybe not . This is an awful film . .
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385,109 | 391,152 | 473,488 | 3 |
Just how many times can we sit through this same , tired story ?
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Insufferable . Sure , it's autobiographical , but when your autobiography just reiterates the same story that we've seen in the movie theaters seven dozen times since Martin Scorsese made Mean Streets , why bother telling it ? The movie is about a young Italian man growing up in a tough New York neighborhood ( this time in Queens , but just as often in Brooklyn or the Bronx ? they seem pretty interchangeable in these movies ) who hangs out with his stupid but lovable friends and deals with his strict but loving father ( played here by Chazz Palminteri , big surprise ) and secretly wishes to get out of this hellhole . The tiny kernel that propels the story is a rival group of friends , here black , no surprise , that is challenging the Italians ' dominance . Blah blah blah . Christ . We also have part of the story taking place in present time , with a miscast and totally wasted Robert Downey Jr . playing the protagonist and trying to get his sick father , who has renounced his son , to go to the hospital . Blah blah blah . The film is a complete waste of talent and time . One of the worst of ' 06 .
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385,000 | 391,152 | 29,682 | 3 |
Unbelievably terrible !
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Sorry to say it , Topper fans , but I found this movie to be utterly , utterly lame ! Cary Grant and Constance Bennett play a fun-loving married couple who like to down the booze . One day they drive their fancy car off the road and die . They can't go to Heaven until they complete one good deed . So they attempt to rectify the situation by making the life of Topper ( Roland Young ) , a banker who worked under Grant , more fun . The usual ghost movie stuff occurs , with Grant and Bennett lifting up objects all over the place , mostly for no reason . The ( very bad ) special effects guy attatches a fishing wire to a handkerchief and waves it around in a way that doesn't look remotely like a ghost is carrying it around . Strangely , the physics of ghosts in this movie seems more like those of the invisible man ? they have physicality but can become invisible at will . Apparently ghosts can even have sex with humans , as Cary Grant gets jealous when his wife is hanging out with Topper . Every belabored joke is painful to sit through . There was all of one scene where I giggled a little , where Topper walks around drunkenly , supported by the invisible ghosts . David Lean did this so much better eight years later with Blithe Spirit . You definitely want to stay far away from this turkey .
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385,145 | 391,152 | 356,618 | 3 |
Would be better off forgotten itself ( possible spoilers )
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Almost a textbook example of what a film critic would refer to as ' underbaked ' . The Forgotten is a conspiracy thriller with one half a good idea behind it . Even more unfortunately , behind that half a good idea lies piss poor script development . So that takes it down to half of a half of a film that had some potential . Julianne Moore plays a woman who lost her nine year-old son in a plane crash 14 months earlier . Lately , the memory of the child seems to be disappearing all the more . Her husband doesn't acknowledge the son's existence , and all corroborating evidence seems to have disappeared . Is she losing her mind ? Only in a good movie . No , it's a conspiracy . She confirms this when she meets up with the father of one of her son's friends , who also lost his offspring in the same crash ( played by Dominic West ) . They unite to try to figure out what happened . Meanwhile , the government comes after them . Straight from Gerald Di Pego's screenplay class , there is a subplot involving a police investigator ( Alfre Woodard ) and Moore's psychologist ( Gary Sinise ? if he's in a movie you know there's a conspiracy ! ) who both start to believe the protagonist and want to help her . The movie becomes fairly nonsensical as it moves on . Characters just don't act like real people would . After strange things begin to happen , Moore and West still plod on in search for their possibly alive children without the fear any real person would develop . When the nature of the conspiracy is finally revealed in full , tons of interesting questions should arise . Nope . I just want my kid , sir . It reminds me of an episode of South Park where the kids go on an adventure simply to retrieve their stolen video game system . When they finally find it , they just start playing , as the incidental characters reveal vast intergalactic goings-on . Nope . Just let me play my video game , sir . .
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385,297 | 391,152 | 203,632 | 3 |
A 10 . 0 on the pretention scale
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SPOILERS SPOILERS Oh Christ ! My worst fears came true ! Tom Tykwer was told so often by both critics and audiences that he was a freakin ' genius that he actually believed it . Of course , his previous film was Run Lola Run , a smash hit on the festival circuit , and subsequently in the video stores , a couple of years ago . That film hinted that its director had some talent , but it played too much like a hip music video director's notion of a Kieslowski film . In the end , the excessiveness served only to give me a massive headache . It was also painfully lacking in substance , although I was pretty sure that Tykwer thought it was chocked full of it . The Princess and the Warrior is unfortunately a step backwards . Way backwards . Tykwer has no restraint and he certainly doesn't have a critical eye when looking at his own work . It sort of has similar themes to RLR , fate and interconnections and such . Absolutely none of it works . Few films have such an egregious lack of cohesion . I don't think there is a single scene in the entire film I thought succeeded . Take a look at this scene ( don't worry , no spoilers ) : after being rejected by the man who saved her life , Sissi ( Franka Potente ) walks out in the rain . In slow motion , she stops , and then the rain ceases . She lays down in the wet grass and looks up at the stars . Brilliant , huh ? Maybe if a middle schooler came up with it . An adult , I hope , would giggle at it . I won't ruin it ( I think you have to see it to believe it ) , but the final sequence is so bad that the audience was laughing their heads off . And Tykwer , as always , wasn't joking . He thought he was being profound . Another thing : I could tell you more , much more about the two main characters from Run Lola Run than I could about the characters in P & W , which is , incidentally , nearly an hour longer than RLR . In fact , I could tell you more about secondary and tertiary characters in RLR . All of the secondary characters in P & W are caricatures , especially the offensive stereotypes you're going to find in the mental hospital scenes . Stop for a brief second : for God's sake , Tykwer , it's like you don't even realize that that whole mental hospital schtick was done to death twenty , maybe even thirty years ago . Christ ! Anyway , before I relate the only bit of back story we get for the two major characters , I'll issue a SPOILERS warning . Sissi : yeah , um , apparently , though it's not clear , her dad's one of the patients . Her mom was electrocuted in the bath tub by a hair drier that mysteriously fell into it . This is explained near the end of the film , but it's rather laughable . After those two facts , nothing else . I knew absolutely nothing about her , except that she works at a mental hospital and is not opposed to masturbating her patients . Why does Tykwer even include this scene , btw ? I'll tell you : it is simply to shock . Does it say anything whatsoever about Sissi ? It serves little purpose . The same goes for half a dozen other scenes in the film , like when one of the patients gets mad and starts to eat glass . Riemer : okay , now this is especially funny , although it's played , if you can believe it , as straight drama : he was arguing with his girlfriend one day in the car ( we know nothing about her ) , so , when he was in the bathroom at a gas station , she , um , lit a cigarette and blew herself to smithereens . I would say that this has to be the stupidest I'm - depressed - 'cause - my - girlfriend's - dead backstory in the history of the cinema , and the world , for that matter . Actually , there's that great one in The Naked Gun where Leslie Nealson tells the ol ' boy - meets - girl - girl - dies - in - a - tragic - blimp - accident story . I think the one in P & W is funnier . END SPOILERSAnother thing that bugs the hell out of me is Tykwer's use of music . In RLR , the film is so steeped in execrable techno that it either hypnotizes you and carries you past the numerous flaws or it gives you epilepsy . The same is true of P & W , except that the score is a bit more traditional . The film is never once suspenseful , but you could easily be tricked into thinking it was just by the music . Actually , there is a simple piano score during the bank robbery sequence that is so beautiful I was nearly fooled into thinking the scene was the only good one in the film . It would have remained that way in my mind if not for the fact that I started to think about what was going on . The acting is pretty horrible , also . The two main characters have a combined total of two expressions . This rather disappoints me . Although I disliked Run Lola Run , I thought that Potente was quite pretty and that she might be able to act in a real film . I was wrong . My guess now would be that , even in a film where the characters are well developed , she would be poor . Maybe I should rent Blow and check out if I am right on that . So what did I like about P & W ? Well , as you can probably guess , very little . However , I can recognize that Tykwer ( or , more correctly , his photographer ) has a talent for camera movement and framing . Color is sometimes used well . The editing can be interesting , though poorly used 99 % of the time . Still , with such vapid writing , no technical prowess could ever have saved The Princess and the Warrior . It's awful . .
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385,159 | 391,152 | 404,032 | 3 |
The most offensive movie of 2005
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If not the most poorly made film of the year , it is indeed the most insulting , offensive , idiotic and just plain evil film of the year . It is , in fact , the absolute worst movie of 2005 . What makes this one particularly sting is that I was completely familiar with the true story it is based on , that of the German woman Anneliese Michel . I have or have had an interest in the occult , demonic possessions included . Not that I believe in it , but I do find stories of it interesting and often very frightening . I read of Michel's case years ago , and it's a chilling one . It is also one of the complete failure of religion which , as an atheist , delights me , I must admit . What really happened is that two priests began performing an exorcism on Anneliese . They didn't bother to care for her physically and eventually starved her to death . As a result , the Roman Catholic Church required that a physician be present at any future exorcisms that they might sanction . In Emily Rose , which moves the story to America , the priest who is accused of letting the possessed girl die is conveniently already given a doctor to observe the ceremony . It's even specifically mentioned that this is Church doctrine . This fact doesn't come into trial right away ( which doesn't make any sense ) . Anyway , we're pretty much told right off the bat that the priest ( played by Tom Wilkinson ) is completely guiltless . There's never any doubt , and no ambiguity whatsoever . The only reason he wants to go to trial is so that he can " tell Emily's story " , as he says about twenty times . And her story , as written by the girl herself , is that she died because the Virgin Mary , whom she saw in a vision , told her she had to so that the people would realize that the spiritual elements of life do in fact exist . So God lets demons take over an innocent girl's soul so that more people would believe in Him . It's Job all over again . The film ends with updates that treat the story as if it happened the way the idiots here have told it , informing us that Emily's story helped people to believe in God . One wonders why it wouldn't do the exact opposite .
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385,570 | 391,152 | 62,407 | 3 |
Wow , am I ever of a different opinion from the majority on this movie !
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It's easily the worst I've seen in months . It was hitting notes that were really hurting my ears , and it kept hitting those same notes over and over and over and over again . I thought I was going to die . I can't believe I even finished it . I passed the excruciating two hours by creating an elaborate fantasy wherein I torture each of the artists involved with the film in the most sadistic ways possible , except Audrey , of course , whom I would be rescuing ? Ahem . Anyway , my God , I hated this movie . I mostly blame Frederic Raphael , the screenwriter , who comes up with a nice gimmick . The film retells the story of a marriage ( whose participants are Audrey Hepburn and Albert Finney ) in a somewhat random order , telling the stories of their various vacations , from when they meet to when other lovers come between them . Unfortunately , the script is in search of an arch . I need some sort of path to follow emotionally , but instead we get everything randomly . Any scene near the end could just as easily be transported with any scene from the beginning . The film wouldn't be any more confusing , for the most part . So we're hitting these ups and downs of the couple's lives pretty steadily , and it just starts to get as repetitive as hell . Worse yet , the dialogue is some of the most horrible ever . It's clever at a certain , low level , but the same bit of cleverness hit over two thousand times in a single movie is enormously torturous . Reminds me of David Mamet . I tried , tried hard to keep my mind on Audrey , because I love her so , so much , but I couldn't . Her costumes were really nice , but that's about the extent of how pleasant I can be . I so wanted to beat Albert Finney to death with a street sign . And every supporting actor is so obnoxious , which is the perfect word to describe this movie : it's the single most obnoxious piece of tripe ever committed to celluloid .
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385,924 | 391,152 | 265,666 | 3 |
An embarrassment for everyone involved
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Ugh ! The Royal Tenenbaums can be blamed on one of two reasons . You know , I think Rushmore is a fine film , but it was far overpraised . Because of its outrageous success , Wes Anderson was probably so sure of himself that he didn't even bother to do any rewrites on his new film , of which it needs at least a dozen and a half . It's either that or that Anderson and Owen Wilson lost all their writing abilities before they went on to pen this screenplay . The Royal Tenenbaums feels like writing that was crapped out when its authors had severe writers ' block . Or , a third alternative , Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson may just have been coked out of their gourds when they were writing this . I don't know how anybody could find this film clever at all . It's quirkiness for quirkiness ' sake , and nothing more . The scenes arise and end randomly , nothing at all connects . The characters are all caricatures , dressing in the same outfits as if they were in a cartoon ( which was meant , but God knows why ) . There are a few laughs , but 90 % of the jokes fall flat . All of the actors are flat and emotionless , except for Ben Stiller , who overplays his role . I imagine that everyone wanted to work with the writer / director of Rushmore , but I can't believe anyone would have signed on if they had read the script . The Royal Tenenbaums is one of the worst films of 2001 , and has possibly the sloppiest script ever written . An Oscar nominated script , I must add . I think the cinema has gotten stronger in the last few years , after a slump in the late 80s through the mid-90s , but this film demonstrates what is worst about the cinema right now , especially independent cinema . .
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385,969 | 391,152 | 458,525 | 3 |
Nooooooooooooooooooo ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !
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Way to start the summer , Marvel . This is a prequel to a series of mostly decent comic book movies - I'd rank the second one , X2 , as maybe the second or third best comic book movie ever . It concerns the origin of the series ' most popular character , Wolverine . Well , that's kind of a lie . It's not really that concerned with anything . It's an indifferently created action movie that goes through the cliché plot line ploddingly . Dialogue is flat , as is the acting . The film is overly violent but completely bloodless - I hate when they edit an R-rated movie into a PG-13 rated movie . At least it's sometimes laughable . Try not to giggle every time Wolverine is on his knees , hands ( and claws ) spread , screaming " NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! " That happens four times in the story , and the movie flashes back to one of those times at least once , as well . There's hardly a good thing I can say about it . It's a stinker , probably the worst summer blockbuster since Van Helsing . Sorry , Mr . Jackman . I have nothing against you , but these two movies are beyond abysmal .
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384,776 | 391,152 | 456,554 | 3 |
Can only barely count as a movie
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Lame pot-inspired comedy produced by Adam Sandler . The low quality of this flick makes me long for the relatively well made Sandler vehicles of the 1990s . Grandma's Boy just feels like a bunch of potheads gathered together and crapped out half a script that they wrote while giggling through clouds of smoke . Things people find hilarious when high tend to be , if you're lucky , only slightly funny in sobriety . The only element of the movie that's ever even remotely entertaining is the wonderful stand-up comedian Nick Swardson , who was the reason I rented it in the first place . His movie characters are always the same , but he has a great sense of comic timing . In the film , he gets to sleep with Shirley Jones . Poor Shirley Jones . All of her Patridge Family money must be spent , and DVDs of The Music Man must be gathering dust on Best Buy's shelves . The film also co-stars Jonah Hill , who's getting famous right now from his roles in Knocked Up and Superbad , and Doris Roberts , aka Ray Romano's mom on Everybody Loves Raymond . The movie actually stars Allen Covert . All I have to say about him is it must be nice to have rich friends like Adam Sandler .
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385,846 | 391,152 | 852,713 | 4 |
Not especially offensive , but quite lame
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Playboy Bunny Anna Faris attaches herself to a sorority full of losers in this Adam Sandler production . That should tell you in itself that this isn't a very good movie , because Sandler's Happy Madison production company has produced some egregious crap over the past few years . The House Bunny is a masterpiece compared to some of those films ( e . g . Grandma's Boy ) , but it's mostly lame with only a handful of laughs , none of them too big . Faris is actually a pretty talented comedic actress , even if she really only has the bimbo persona to work with . But her line readings are often very clever . Emma Stone , who co-starred last year in Superbad , proves herself a talent to watch here . But after those two , no one else is particularly funny . I did like the film's almost 1980s-like feel , almost like this was a Revenge of the Nerds for girls . I just wish it were funnier .
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385,611 | 391,152 | 780,608 | 4 |
Lame
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Lame pot comedy about a girl ( Anna Farris ) who gets high , eats a bunch of cupcakes which , unbeknownst to her , have pot in them , and then becomes really , really high . The movie follows her as she stumbles about , trying to acquire more pot and then to pay off her dealer . But , being high and all , she doesn't quite have the gumption to get where she's going . There are definitely some funny moments , but in general it's never more than mildly amusing . And Farris , I think , overplays it a bit . I'm not a pothead myself , but I don't think most potheads would even find much to like about the movie . For one thing , Farris does not end up winning in the end . The message is clearly that drugs can get you into trouble . And I don't think that's something the film's intended audience really wants to hear . A big step down from Araki's previous film , Mysterious Skin .
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385,777 | 391,152 | 120,338 | 4 |
Something amiss . . .
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I understand why every Dick and Jane on the planet liked this , but why did the critics give it such good reviews ? I mean , it is not , contrary to popular opinion , the worst movie ever made ( although , yes , it may be the most overhyped , although The Matrix and Star Wars : Episode 1 are huge contenders ) . It is merely bad . There are very few things to like in this film . Technically , it succeeds to a point . I really did believe that I was watching a real ship sink ( well , since the model built by Cameron for the film was just barely a model and more a full-sized ship , it ought to look real ! ) . Some of the CGI was terrible , though . The people falling from the boat were so obviously digitally created that I laughed a bit . The writing is extraordinarily weak . Dialogue is just as bad . Everything that happened in the film , which takes over 3 hours , can easily be related on a cocktail napkin . The worst part about it has to be the acting . Kate Winslet has actually been good , elsewhere , but here she has nothing to work with . DiCaprio is bad . There's no saving him - his career , much like that of a boy band , is going down the toilet as I type ( he's starting to gain weight and get greasy like Marlon Brando did - this sort of right is only reserved for actors of Brando's status , so stop it now , Leo ! ) . Billy Zane is awful , too , but it is mostly that his part is so insubstantial . So do you believe in payolas ? It's beginning to make me curious that such obviously bad films as Titanic , American Pie , and The Matrix all got rave reviews from critics . All three of the films were abominations . And you may ask , what does it matter if a critic reviews it well ? I don't care about their opinion ! Not true , my friend . Even if your insecurities tell you that critics are unimportant , you always secretly feel victory when the consensus is for a film you really like . Therefore , there are no guilty feelings after you have enjoyed something like Titanic so much . Instead , you feel for a fading second that , yes , you are part of high culture . You understand art . BLAH ! It's all just sinister psychology working its claws over simple minds . And for those of you who absolutely despise this film , I can guess your favorite pictures : Pulp Fiction , Reservoir Dogs , Fight Club , and , of course , The Matrix . Well , you people should actually begin to learn what REAL film is . Rent A Night to Remember , the best film about the Titanic's sinking . It is not the greatest film ever made , but it is great .
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385,009 | 391,152 | 52,611 | 4 |
One of the last films Willis O'Brien made , but it isn't a very good movie
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Giant radioactive monsters , while apparently preferring Tokyo , do occasionally attack other major cities , whether they be San Francisco in It Came from Beneath the Sea , or London , as in this movie . This one , called the behemoth , I think is referred to as a plesiosaur but looks more apatosaurus-like . The Giant Behemoth , aka Behemoth the Sea Monster , is your average monster-attacks-city movie . It spends an inordinate amount of time on people jabbering along , scientists trying to figure out what gave dead people radiation burns , et cetera , et cetera . By the time I started nodding off , the monster makes his first appearance , and looks kind of like a piñata . Later it comes on land and is a stop-motion effect . This was Willis O'Brien's penultimate film . At this point , O'Brien and his techniques had been surpassed by those of his student , Ray Harryhausen . The behemoth looks not much better than the dinosaurs of the silent The Lost World . Still , I quite like it . There's just something about stop-motion effects that charms me . But these effects are too few and far between to make the movie worth anything .
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385,661 | 391,152 | 221,218 | 4 |
Maybe the least thrilling thriller ever made
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The major mistake of the filmmakers here was to make this film a thriller at all . It would have been better as just a drama . Still , it wouldn't have worked well at all . The film is paper thin in every way , and , as they did set out to make a thriller , it has no suspense whatsoever . I had great hopes for Leelee Sobieski . I've only seen her once elsewhere , in Eyes Wide Shut , but I was completely knocked over by her beauty . Now , two or three years after she made that film , she seems to have gotten uglier . Well , she was shorter than Tom Cruise in EWS , but now she's taller than Stellan Skarsgard . I don't know . Her character is poorly written , so she has no real chance to give a decent performance . The only character given some meat is that of Skarsgard , but he delivers what can only be his worst performance in this film . I didn't despise this film , really . I was just bored . It's not at all worth watching , but the climactic sequence is pretty amusing , although in the wrong way . .
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385,133 | 391,152 | 318,761 | 4 |
Terrible ! Skip it !
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Extremely phoney-feeling indie about a disaffected youth who has a secret habit of sucking his thumb . This quirky character is surrounded by many other quirky characters and blah blah blah . Who the hell cares ? Mills ( and / or novelist Walter Kirn ) get pretty much everything wrong here . Everything feels forced and it's impossible to give two craps about anything that happens . The dialogue is atrocious , and the casting is awful . Several indie regulars appear and others come along obviously trying to improve their indie cred . The only actor who fits is the lead , Lou Taylor Pucci , who was found after many auditions . His debut film is so bad that I hope he can overcome it . The kid has talent . The music , as well as the cinematography , are decent , too . Otherwise , this is one of the worst of 2005 . If you want real indie dramedies that ring true , check out Junebug and You and Me and Everyone We Know . The latter especially demonstrates how a film can be extremely quirky and still feel like there's honest humanity behind it .
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385,454 | 391,152 | 97,383 | 4 |
Stay away from the American DV
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I'm not prepared to pass any kind of harsh judgement against this film , because the DVD that Netflix has is pretty awful , and the American version is severely edited . From what I did see , however , the direction of this Francis of Assisi biopic isn't that good . Liliana Cavani , most famous for her exploitation film The Night Porter , directs this very blandly . Her casting is bad , too , and she seems to have made her choices for beauty's sake . After seeing The Wrestler a while back , I was left wondering who this Mickey Rourke person was , and when it was that he was a world-famous actor with a great career to which everyone refers . Having also recently revisited Rossellini's The Flowers of St . Francis , one of my favorite films , this film seemed like a natural choice . Rourke was indeed a great beauty at this point in his life . He's certainly not the gruff bruiser I know him as ( from The Wrestler , Sin City , Man on Fire and Domino mostly ) . I'll have to see him in something else before I judge his earlier worth . He's not particularly good here . He doesn't seem to belong , anyway . Far too beautiful , and I wasn't convinced by his soft-spokenness . Helena Bonham Carter co-stars , and the rest of the cast is mostly Italian . I have to admit I was mostly bored by this film . It came off as a cheap made-for-TV biopic , though that could mostly be due to the crumminess of the DVD . The worst aspect is the electronic score by Vangelis . I have to admit I rather like his scores to Chariots of Fire and Blade Runner , but his score here does not fit and is brutally awful much of the time .
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385,603 | 391,152 | 46,022 | 4 |
Against the grain
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Sorry people , but I really hated this movie . I found it dull and I found the characters incredibly banal . It's not unprecedented . I also disliked Ophuls La Ronde , made three years before this film . The next time I want to see a well made French romance , I'll go slumming with Rene Clair . And , people , the next time I say I want to see a movie , and you know that there is a climactic pistol duel , kindly tell me to avoid that one . I have no sympathy for Madame de , none whatsoever . If I were her husband , I too would have cheated on her . I mean , we're supposed to judge him for having a mistress , but when Madame de cheats on her husband , we're supposed to find it romantic ? Only in movie logic . She apparently goes off with Vittorio de Sica's character because she finds her husband boring and inattentive . Who would attend to her ? She's utterly brainless herself ? What does she have to offer ? Nothing besides breasts . All of my negative judgement was concentrated on her , and , while I wasn't strictly allowed to sympathize with her husband , I tended to , anyway . I mean , yeah , Vittorio de Sica is a stud . I agree totally . He deserves a better mistress than Madame de . Think about it : if she were married to De Sica , life would be just as dull and she'd probably be cavorting with Monsier de . I can recognize the great camera work , and there are a couple of fantastic moments . A dance that fades into another dance , a letter torn to bits transforming into snowflakes . Beautiful moments . Too bad they were in the wrong movie . Someone should steal them . .
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385,012 | 391,152 | 455,538 | 4 |
Crap
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Based on the autobiographical tale of writer Toby Young , this film follows a British writer ( renamed Sidney Young , played by Simon Pegg ) who is hired by a major magazine in New York . To work there , though , Pegg must soften up his edges and lose his soul . The model for the movie is La Dolce Vita , referenced directly many times in the film . There is almost nothing I hate more than a mediocre or bad film referencing a movie I love ( it also references All About Eve ) . How to Lose Friends isn't that bad a movie , probably , but it bothered me with its insistence on being as uninteresting as humanly possible . The cast includes Kirsten Dunst , Jeff Bridges , Gillian Anderson and Danny Huston . All are fine , but this kind of material is a huge waste of time for all of them . It's even worse for Simon Pegg , who won so many of us over in Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz . I didn't see Run , Fatboy , Run , but it's only two films into his American crossover career and he's nearly castrated . One more chance is all he gets . Thankfully , I'm one of the few people who actually saw this movie . Fireproof , the Christian-themed movie where Kirk Cameron plays a computer porn-addicted fireman , made nearly three times as much money as it did .
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384,668 | 391,152 | 41,604 | 4 |
Bordering on torture
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Love Happy is not one of the first Marx Brothers pictures that you're going to want to watch . In fact , you had better be a Marx Brothers enthusiast if you plan to get through this one without being bored to tears . Myself , this is only the second one of their films that I've seen , the first being the hilarious Duck Soup . Most everything in that film was pure genius . Love Happy almost completely lacks humor . I laughed at Harpo a lot in Duck Soup . Here , he makes me cringe . I did not laugh at him once . Chico fares slightly better , but I'd stress the word slightly . I love the way he plays the piano in one scene . Groucho seems to be the only one who can still successfully ( and almost effortlessly ) inspire laughs . But he's reduced to almost a supporting role in this one . The scene where Marilyn Monroe walks into his private eye office is very funny , although it kind of ends randomly . Monroe walks out for no reason , and Groucho decides not to follow . Well , whatever . The only other point of interest was the copious amount of advertisements in the last section of the film . I always find it interesting how advertisements worked in the past , and this film provides a window to that time . But besides these few things , this is a huge disappointment to someone who was just looking to experience more comedic genius .
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384,778 | 391,152 | 87,451 | 4 |
Crud
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Awful Star Wars knock-off with a slightly more comic tinge . Robert Urich stars as the leader of a group of ice pirates , who steal ice because water is the most valuable substance in the universe now ( how all the poor people stay alive is a mystery ) . He hooks up with Mary Crosby ( Bing's daughter , around 25 and a total cutie ) , a princess looking for her missing father . Also in the cast are an embarrassed-looking Anjelica Huston in some hilarious sci-fi get-ups and a pudgy , short-ish Ron Perlman ( whom I thought was seven feet tall from his other roles ! ) . And John Carradine , who looks days from death and Hollywood Squares funnyman ( relative term ) Bruce Vilanch . If you ever wanted to see Bruce Vilanch get decapitated , here's your film . But , then again , even that's not worth seeing , as it doesn't shut him up at all ( think he might have been a robot , but I nodded off a couple of times ) .
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384,587 | 391,152 | 784,972 | 4 |
Lame
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This was kind of a test watch , the first film I watched through Netflix's instant watch option . I didn't expect this film to be that good , and I didn't want to waste a place in my queue for it . My instincts were correct about the film's quality . Bob Odenkirk , one of the funniest men who ever lived , hasn't had great success as a director . This film is unbelievably sloppy in both its script and its editing . I rarely notice editing mistakes , but they're rampant here . Everything would be forgiven , of course , if the film were funny . The Brothers Solomon has its moments , but , in general , it's lame . Will Arnet and Will Forte play too socially stunted brothers who want to have a baby before their coma-afflicted father passes . After failing to land women who would willingly have their children , they find a woman ( Kristen Wiig ) who is willing to do it for money . I can come up with a lot of things wrong with this picture . For example , Will Arnet is too much of an alpha male type to play a hopeless loser . Plus , as that alpha male type , he's better suited to jerk roles . It can be hard , if not impossible , to root for him . And Forte is funny enough on Saturday Night Live , but he never stood out . He comes off as weaker than Arnet , and , even if I'm not laughing at Arnet , he ends up burying Forte . Wiig is usually a pretty funny gal , but she's cast here as the straight man . The only actor who consistently gets laughs is Chi McBride as Wiig's enormous African American boyfriend with a foul mouth . Swears may be cheap laughs , but when watching a comedy with a dearth of laughs , I'll take the cheap ones .
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385,817 | 391,152 | 93,940 | 4 |
Like a really shtty Chekhov play
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I cannot imagine Woody Allen creating a film worse than September . Never has a film been more stagy - Allen must have intended that feeling , but only God knows why . The direction is poor in every way . The dialogue is God awful , often laughable , and the acting is just as bad . Mia Farrow and Dianne Wiest turn in what must be their worst performances . Sam Waterston is ineffective . The two parents ( whose names I cannot even recall ) seem like their in a different movie - a Woody Allen film . Their delivery is wry and often good , at least it would be if it belonged here . None of the characters ever ring true - never . What's really sad is that there is a good story underneath this terrible train wreck of a film . Lane's situation and her relationship with the other characters could have been fascinating . Unfortunately , the events of the past are introduced is such a poor way , the same way a really bad play would do it , that they never really seem important . Allen wanted desperately to make a Bergmaesque chamber piece , but Bergman is smart enough to have the outside world exist in his similar films , Persona , for instance . If you are an Allen fan , then this one is worth seeing - an artist's bad work is nearly as important as his great work . Just be prepared for something utterly awful - at least it's only 82 minutes long .
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385,367 | 391,152 | 342,882 | 4 |
I liked Institute Benjamenta , but this really is a bore
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The Brothers Quay are directors , judging by conventional thought , should have stuck to making short films . I myself actually really liked their first feature , Institute Benjamenta , but judging by their sophomore effort , The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes , I'm willing to agree they don't come close to equaling their past genius at feature length . Piano Tuner is , without a doubt , a gorgeous film to look at , and often to listen to . Unfortunately , it's borderline painful to sit through with its convoluted narrative and glacial pace . Reading the plot synopsis , it sounds like a pretty good story . But the Brothers fail miserably to bring it to life . One thing they should consider avoiding completely in the future : dialogue . My God , it's awful here . A huge bust .
|
384,659 | 391,152 | 26,056 | 4 |
A rather hideous movie
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I shut it off with about 15 minutes to go . Katharine Hepburn is a middle class girl ( who's supposed to be poverty-stricken - I'm sure Depression era audiences just loved to hear how poor this family is ) with upper class tastes . She sometimes gets invited to big parties at mansions , and during one of these outings she meets Fred MacMurray - if I had known the Shaggy Dog was in this picture , I probably would have avoided it altogether . I can't think of a duller performance in the movies than his in Alice Adams . This film also has a greater than normal level of bigotry . I usually try to look past this kind of material , but it wore on me here , probably because of the poorness of the rest of the film . Hepburn's less uptight brother says hello to the band leader at the upper class party , and she is just horrified at this . When MacMurray catches him playing craps in the closet with a couple of black men , Hepburn explains , " Oh , he just likes the stories darkies tell . He's thinking of writing about them someday . He's very literary . " And then there's Hattie McDaniel . This woman had genuine talent , but she was always reduced to whoring herself for money . Out of the four or five films I've seen with her , this is easily her most embarrassing role . A sweaty , gum-chewing mammy , she shuffles around forgetting to refill her massa's water glass . Her little tiara or whatever the hell maids wear keeps falling down over her face , ha ha ha ( oh , did I mention that this was supposed to be a comedy ? I didn't even realize it was trying to be funny until that scene ) . This film would be sheer torture if it weren't for Katharine Hepburn's great performance . Yes , pretty flowers can grow on sht . I just wish I could give a damn about her situation . Well , if it hadn't been Hepburn playing the role , I wouldn't have even tried to give a damn . .
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385,803 | 391,152 | 320,661 | 4 |
Weak Crusades epic by Ridley Scott
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Scott has an undeserved reputation , mostly based on just a couple of movies ( Alien and Blade Runner ) , and it doesn't surprise me that this movie is so unimpressive . It makes Gladiator , a decent film , look like it deserved to win the Best Picture Oscar . Orlando Bloom stars . A lot of negative stuff has been said about him , but , truth be told , I don't think he's that bad an actor . He's a perfect matinée idol , and Pirates of the Caribbean suits him well . He's poor in Kingdom of Heaven , but I wouldn't blame him . His role is underwritten . His character , Balian , is a French blacksmith who discovers that he is the illegitimate son of a great warrior . He then travels to Jerusalem , where Christians have held fort for the past century . Through dirty dealings on the Christians ' side , the Muslims , lead by Saladin , attempt to take Jerusalem back . There is little that is worthwhile . The battle scenes have all been done better in other movies . I guess after Return of the King , nothing much is going to compare . The references to modern politics are sparse and very poorly integrated . Troy did this much better last year . It criticizes hardcore Christianity to some extent , but really these are only petty barbs . The attitudes of the characters feel completely anachronistic . Besides a couple of scummy priests , religion is barely present . Morality is completely modernized . The only reason I had interest in seeing this movie was because it is Eva Green's second role . Her first was in Bertolucci's The Dreamers . Her screen presence is hard to argue with , but I think she is a gifted young actress and I hope she will go onto better things . She is completely wasted in Kingdom of Heaven .
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385,255 | 391,152 | 141,974 | 4 |
Problematic to an enormous degree
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The War Zone is a very frustrating film . Most self-proclaimed film buffs and critics will and have been easily convinced by the film . That's not to say that if you like this film you're dumb . You just missed the flaws . Anyone who wanders upon it unawares is likely to be repelled , needless to say . I , who have been wanting to see it since Jamie Berardinelli spewed about it as being one of the best films of the 1990s , that bone head , I myself found it contrived and very annoying , containing some bits of worth in individual scenes . To me , it seemed that Tim Roth , as well as the screenwriter ( who also wrote the novel on which it's based ) , had calculated every iota of this film from the dialogue to the shot composition . Their goal was emotional manipulation , but the camera records the film's falseness clearly . This film is an attempt to produce a realistic situation . In the cinema , realism is achieved by a naturalness in the actors and writing , as well as the actual filming . In a good 90 % of the scenes , dialogue was obviously scripted with nothing improvised . I would bet that the minutest detail of tone of voice was written into the script . You can tell this because the rhythm of the dialogue is so precise , it leaves no room for invention . It might seem natural to the untrained ear , but it is phony naturalism . In the remaining 10 % , I think it is possible that there was some improvisation , especially in the scene where the father denies everything and attacks his son for suggesting such awful things . I would bet my life that Tim Roth began his career on the stage . He's a mediocre but entertaining actor , speaking his lines , even those in the basest slang , as in Pulp Fiction , with the most eloquent and practiced diction . As a director , this is how his actors turn out , too . It should not be this way . The acting is measured to an unnecessary degree . All of the performances , except for a few individual scenes , seem forced . I can just see Roth directing these actors from behind the ever-present camera . Also , the impeccably composed photography is totally out of place in The War Zone . This should have been done with hand held cameras , maybe even on video . It should have seemed sloppy . Instead , we get one of the most beautifully shot films of the past few years , which tells me that Roth was so confident that his subject matter was important , the only thing he was worrying about was the cinematography . Movies about sexual abuse should not be beautiful in any way . The photography definitely undermines the weight of the subject . Even if the film had not seemed so phony to me , I still would have had problems with it . The film sickened me , not because its subject matter was sickening , but because it is treated in an exploitative way . My guess is that more people would get off on it than would get anything from it . Nudity is rampant , which is called for , I suppose , but Roth couldn't have found a more sexually compelling actress to get buck-naked . I guess if the film had worked , I would have felt guiltier about finding that actress so attractive . But she seems like she's playing naughty through the whole film . Sadists will love the scene where she burns her nipple , not to mention the very graphic depiction of daddy-daughter anal sex . Speaking of which , the version I saw was rated R . I swear it was rated NC-17 in the theaters , so I assume that there was some editing done to reduce it to R for HBO . But what the hell could have been removed ? I'm certainly no prude , but , if any film has ever earned an NC-17 , whether or not I saw an edited version , it is The War Zone . It's the truth that the evil MPAA castrates a ton of indie films with that rating when they don't at all deserve them , handing awful Hollywood products R's , but this is not a case of that sort of discrimination , for sure ! This is most definitely a failure , an enormous one . .
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385,583 | 391,152 | 257,360 | 4 |
Ugh .
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I knew I was going to dislike this , as I have a real distaste for Alexander Payne's films , so I probably should have just skipped it . But I had a chance to see it for free , so I did . And ugh . It is such an ugly and cynical movie , with obvious themes that , if a better writer or director had handled them , wouldn't have seemed nearly so trite . It is in vogue for critics to claim that certain filmmakers revel in deriding their characters , and it's a criticism that I personally don't like to make , but Payne is one who spends most of the time looking down on the poor saps in his creations . All one has to do to prove that in About Schmidt is to point out Dermot Mulroney . Payne's idea of humor is to give him a mullet , and to make sure that the audience can always see the mullet . I'll bet the audience in the theater ( and this is the type of film that attracts pseudo-intellectual , semi-yuppies ) was cracking up at it . I watched it alone on a television , so all I had was my own screams of horror . And the letters to Ndugu were on a whole other terrible level , as the depth of the ' joke ' is more complex ; these emotional testimonies should really be touching , but instead Payne constantly has to remind us that Schmidt's pains are as insignificant as Schmidt himself . This probably wasn't even Payne's intention , but he is such an inept writer that he shoots himself in the foot with his own poorly judged gag . Well , the one positive thing I can say about the film is that Jack Nicholson finds every shred of humanity in Warren Schmidt that he can . If it succeeds on any emotional level at all , it is because Nicholson is such a great actor . Kathy Bates , however , in a highly celebrated role , is embarrassing . She was Oscar nominated for getting naked . Otherwise , she is just another one-dimensional character for Payne to tease . .
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385,949 | 391,152 | 417,148 | 4 |
A disappointment coming after Cellular
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I finally got around to seeing this film , which everyone was talking about months before its release , but which everyone avoided like the plague when it actually opened . Really , the title is all you have to know about the movie . Take that , and the fact that it stars Samuel L . Jackson , and you can basically imagine an amusing scenario in your head . Unfortunately , a feature length movie has to last a certain amount of time ( although , I should point out , one doesn't have to last 107 minutes , which is how long this one does ) . The concept grows old pretty quick , especially when the titular villains are created with poor CGI 90 % of the time . Jackson seems pretty lifeless , which is surprising considering how happy he seemed while promoting it . While I can't say I was too shocked this was so poor , I was holding out some hope . David R . Ellis ' previous film , Cellular , was ingenious in how it spun such a fun movie out of such a stupid gimmick . I was hoping he could do the same for Snakes on a Plane .
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385,030 | 391,152 | 443,649 | 4 |
Just plain boring between the all too few action sequences
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Roland Emmerich isn't a very good director , I'll readily admit , but he's made a few entertaining movies . I might feel guilty about enjoying Stargate , Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow , but I won't deny that I did enjoy them . His new film was advertised as an action extravaganza involving woolly mammoths and saber-tooth tigers . I expected it to be ham-fisted , but I also thought it looked like it should be a moderately fun picture . My modest expectations were not at all met . Don't get me wrong , the action sequences delivered . The special effects were great , and the set pieces were decently exciting . But , man , are they few and far between . There are pretty much three of these set pieces in the film , a mammoth hunt , an encounter with gigantic , man-eating birds , and the whole climactic slave rebellion . Prepare to be gravely disappointed with the saber-toothed tiger , if you were hoping for something cool there . Between these sequences are endless bits where undefined pre-historic tribesmen sit around chatting it up in faux-primitive English , which consists of simple sentences and the lack of contractions . It's hard to even sit through at these times , and it's one of the few movies I've seen at a theater where I seriously contemplated falling asleep .
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385,251 | 391,152 | 51,658 | 4 |
ENORMOUSLY disappointing :
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Ugh , what an awful film . How could Vincente Minnelli have directed such a film ? There are a couple of good points . The cinematography is pretty good , as well as the costume design and sets . Basically , the technical side is fine . And Leslie Caron , whom I hardly recognized ( An American in Paris , in my humble opinion , is the greatest movie musical ever made ) , is marvelous . Her character , Gigi , is wonderful , and I wish , oh , God , how I wish that she was in a different story with different characters played by different actors ! She has nothing to work with here . EVERYTHING is awful . The story just meanders . I could describe it in just a short sentence ( MAJOR SPOILERS , if you give a care , IN THE NEXT SENTENCE ) : a Parisian aristocrat falls in love with a strong-minded young girl and then marries her . That's ALL there is . END SPOILERS : None of the actors besides Caron is worth their weight in feces . This is the type of film where I hope like heck that the heroine doesn't end up with the hero . To boot , the songs are AWFUL . Most of them , anyhow . There are a couple of songs that are decent , one in the form of the people's gossip and the other where Gastone , Gigi's suitor , sings , with his mouth shut ( for the most part ) , " She's Not Thinking of Me . " That one is the highlight of this otherwise dismal film . Take the song " It's a Bore , " which Gastone sings with another man . In it , he basically expresses that everything in life , every part of Paris and all the world , is boring . Finally , he finds a girl who does not bore him . At least now she doesn't , but I feel mighty sorry for her in the future . No woman can be entertaining til death does them part ! Gigi won the Best Picture Oscar in 1959 , and , in my opinion , it's the worst Best Picture winner I've ever seen , even worse than Titanic . I almost want to cry ! What happened to the Vincente Minnelli who directed the absolute masterpiece An American in Paris ? I'd rather watch that film back to back from here to eternity than experience this dreck once more .
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385,393 | 391,152 | 298,361 | 4 |
The South Korean equivalent of Skinemax
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A woman goes to a psychologist and is hypnotized . In her hypnotic state , she has flashbacks of black widow-like murders she committed recently , while possessed by the Greek goddess Hera . In a confusing bit of editing , we also follow a group of detectives who are investigating the murders . The film is just a massive excuse for softcore porn and lame violence . I rented it because of the absolutely hilarious trailer found on the DVD for Miike's Gozu , which advertises " sex with on snowfield ! " , " homosexual sex ! " ( while a man and woman copulate on screen ) and " sex with doctor ! " The actual movie is much less funny , of course , but it has its moments . They invent all kinds of interesting new sexual positions . The woman causes an instant erection when she brushes against a man's crotch . Perhaps the best thing about the DVD is that the default language is actually English , a dub that sounds like it was produced in India , half incoherent and half containing ludicrously translated phrases like those I've already mentioned .
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384,658 | 391,152 | 273,923 | 4 |
Very , very bad
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This takes the cake so far for the worst 2002 theatrical release that I've yet seen . It's one of those movies that can't decide if it wants to be an exploitative teen comedy along the lines of American Pie or a poignant teen movie along the lines of some other title that I can't come up with at this time of night . I suppose those two sub-genres could mix quite well , but screenwriter Mike White has no clue how . He populates his movie with cartoony characters who do have a basis in reality , but he emphasizes the cartoonishness of them too much . Catherine O'Hara , for instance , is an alcoholic , but would any mother really behave as she does in front of important regents from Stanford ? One character is supposed to be insanely into helping animals , but this point only comes up once in a while and it has no pay off . A wild little dog that is picked up rips up a car seat , but then vanishes for the rest of the film . I know , why should I want a cliched scene of the dog ripping up expensive crap or something , but why even have a nutty dog if he never gets to go nutty ? Now , I don't want to be too mean , but sometimes I can't help it : Colin Hanks , son of Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson , turns in a truly execrable performance in this film . I know , plenty will jump right on the I-hate-Tom Hanks bandwagon , but I'm not going for such a cheap shot . Tom Hanks is , if nothing else , at least a competent actor . But Colin mugs in the worst way . His whining gets annoying instantly , and I wanted to smack him for most of the film . On the other hand , we have Jack Black . I , for one , am a Jack Black fan . Sure , he hasn't acted in the best movies , but I think he's consistently funny . He's hilarious when he lands the right material , like , for example , High Fidelity . He's actually not bad at all here . He's generally funny . Unfortunately , he's barely in the film . I think he crosses the line here from being a lovable scamp to a criminal maniac , though , which isn't beneficial for the movie . Sure , I can laugh at the stoner Jack Black , but can I laugh at the Jack Black who burns down the Stanford Admissions Office ? The director of this film , Jake Kasdan , debuted with the excellent and offbeat The Zero Effect . I reel at the thought of such a huge backstep as Orange County . .
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385,421 | 391,152 | 71,230 | 4 |
Terrible ! Godawful !
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One of the least funny comedies that I've ever sighed through and one of the most overrated pieces of crap I can think of . I like a couple of Brooks ' movies . Young Frankenstein I would call his masterpiece , and The Producers is pretty funny . After that , Silent Movie is okay . Spaceballs is good for some cheap laughs . But he can make quite the awful film when he wants to . Remember the Hitchcock parody , High Anxiety ? That sucked big time , but I liked Blazing Saddles even less . I giggled a couple of times , but there was only one big laugh . Most of the funnier jokes were ruined by a 60 seconds long promo I saw on Comedy Central ! Cleavon Little , Gene Wilder , and Slim Pickens try their damndest to make it work , but they have no material to work with whatsoever . Some of the racial comedy might have worked back when Richard Pryor first started his career , but it's all hopelessly dated in 2002 . And is it just me , or do others cringe whenever Madeline Kahn shows up in a Mel Brooks movie ? I guess I laugh at her in Young Frankenstein , but she does little but embarrass the production when she comes on screen . .
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385,676 | 391,152 | 142,257 | 4 |
Not very good at all
|
This infamous Japenese cult flick unfortunately doesn't live up to its lofty reputation . It has some worthy moments , but only a few in what is otherwise a painfully boring and poorly made affair . The confusing story involves a medical student searching for his origins based on the few memories he has from his childhood . He makes his way to the coast of the Japan Sea , where he discovers an obituary for a man who looks exactly like him . He then pretends to be the dead man resurrected , and eventually is brought to an island not far away where the dead man's father is purportedly conducting odd experiments on human beings . The entire story up to here is confusing , uninvolving , and honestly pretty stupid . Only when the protagonist arrives on the island with the titular malformed men does it contain a shred of interest . But only a shred . The mad scientist on the island , kind of the Japanese version of Dr . Moreau , is mutating human beings into freaks . These people , played by circus performers , are dressed in weird costumes and covered with icky makeup . Supposedly the film was meant to reflect the effects of an atomic bomb . I'm not really that sure that was meant , since I don't think any radiation poisoning resulted in a person turning silver . This seems to be where some of the film's fans find substance in the thing , but , really , that half-assed commentary isn't even close to as good as the half-assed commentary in the original Gojira , or , even more appropriate to this conversation , another Ishiro Honda film , Matango : Attack of the Mushroom People , which was made six years earlier than Horrors of Malformed Men . The malformed men are pretty cool , I must admit , but their appearance and participation in the film takes up around ten minutes of this 100 minute film , one tenth , by my estimation . I couldn't forgive the first half of the movie . And even moreso I can't forgive what comes after this , where the mad doctor tells his story in a prolonged , monochromatic flashback . I guess I should be thankful , because the stuff I couldn't understand about the plot earlier in the movie is explicated in such detail that I wanted to rip my hair out . But at least I finally got the plot . And worse , after the doctor has his ten minute flashback , another character has another ten minute flashback . The story is patently ridiculous , but that's not necessarily a bad thing . It could have been fun , but it isn't . It's a crushing bore ! It does end on a hilarious bit , but nothing could have saved this movie .
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385,425 | 391,152 | 193,253 | 5 |
Am I the only one who hated this ?
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Perhaps I missed something . It was rather hot where I watched this , and I was a bit tired . However , Jin-Roh seemed distinctly like it was trying way too hard to be ponderous and philosophical , but it only ended up seeming silly . The whole Red Riding Hood allegory was rather overdone . The whole story seemed somehow both overcomplicated and too slight simultaneously - quite an achievement in itself , really . The animation seemed poor in comparison to so many other animes . Perhaps if I were to see it again , I'd appreciate it , but I couldn't take this film !
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385,625 | 391,152 | 372,784 | 5 |
Mediocrity
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A nice effort , I suppose , but a failure nonetheless . I actually prefer the first three installments of the 1980s & 1990s Batman franchise , though none of them are great movies , either . Tim Burton ? and even Joel Schumacher ? brought at least some vision into their Batman worlds . Nolan attempts to do this realistically ? that was the original idea , anyway ? but he is bogged down by screen writing and action movie clichés . There weren't half as many explosions in all four of the 90s Batman films combined . Batman Begins does little to deepen the story , as some critics have claimed . The backstory was told perfectly , and with great economy , in 1989's Batman . There was no emotion lost . Nolan takes nearly an hour to tell it , and he doesn't make it any more interesting . They didn't find a better actor to play Batman . Christian Bale is as dull as Keaton , Kilmer , and Clooney . The villains are uninteresting . Ra's Al Ghul ( which is mispronounced throughout the film ) has always been my least favorite of the Batman villains . Dr . Jonathan Crane , aka " the Scarecrow " is wonderfully played by Cillian Murphy when he's out of his mask , but he is supremely uninteresting when he's in it ( doesn't help that Nolan resorts to stupid distorted images and noise pollution whenever he puts the mask on ) . Katie Holmes is a wonderful actress in small projects , but , like Natalie Portman , she doesn't translate well to blockbusters . Plus , Tom Cruise just ruined her for me . Gary Oldman and Tom Wilkinson are horribly miscast ( Wilkinson as a mob boss ? ) . They actually might have just switched roles and it would have been better . The only things the film gets excessively right are Alfred and Lucius Fox , played by Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman . But , really , while these two consummate actors bring an air of class to this kiddy pool , they out-act both the hero and the villains to such an extent that it warps the movie . I really should not desire more scenes with the butler . I should add Liam Neeson to that , as well . He's very good , and perfectly cast . Batman Begins is often a good actioner , but it should have been much better .
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385,035 | 391,152 | 480,242 | 5 |
Trite and clichéd , featuring the most annoyingly perfect family since the Osmands
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This started out kind of charming . Not great , because from the first moment everything seems pretty clichéd , but charming nonetheless . But as it moved on , the clichés and contrivances started to become overwhelming . The story involves a widower ( Steve Carell ) with three daughters who , while visiting his parents in Rhode Island , meets a woman ( Juliette Binoche ) in a book store . They hang out for a few hours , talk , get to know each other . But she's in a relationship . Turns out , predictably , that it's his brother's girlfriend , and she's with him at their parents ' house during some family reunion or something . Every subsequent scene involves the two would-be lovers being pushed together , whether they are playing hide-and-seek , doing aerobics , or taking a shower . It's never funny , and it becomes lamer each time . But if it were only this , the film would still be acceptable . Steve Carell is , of course , fantastic at playing chagrin , and he's so effortlessly lovable . Juliette Binoche has certainly started to show her age , but she's good and still attractive . It's really the whole family thing that drove me crazy . This is seriously the most loving family in human history . They hang together , have fun , and constantly play games with each other , whether it's competitive crosswords , charades , bowling , or , God help me , a family talent show . What kind of family has a family talent show ? Jesus Christ ! Sorry , maybe I'm just lamenting my own semi-dysfunctional family , but I'd say we were not that far below the curve . To spend time with this family would be about as oppressive as having ex-cons and sexual abusers in the family . It made me want to re-watch Baumbach's Margot at the Wedding just to get a breath of fresh air ! Honestly , the movie's not that bad , but my purely subjective reaction was that it was insufferable !
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384,724 | 391,152 | 110,684 | 5 |
Not that good , really . Newman's been better , and the writing is poor .
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Quirky small town comedy about a likable curmudgeon ( Paul Newman ) who becomes reacquainted with the adult son he left years ago , as well as his son's son . Honestly , I just didn't like the film . It comes off like a poorly written novel , with scenes and characters the author thinks are funny but which just aren't believable . And when put on the screen , the weaknesses become all the more obvious . I thought the whole film felt phony . Some of the performances were good , especially Newman ( though I certainly wouldn't consider this among his best work ) . Also good are Jessica Tandy , Pruitt Taylor Vince , Melanie Griffith and Bruce Willis . The biggest hole in the cast is Dylan Walsh , who plays Newman's son . He went on to star in the F / X series Nip / Tuck . Incidentally , the woman who plays his wife , Catherine Dent , also went on to co-star in an F / X series , The Shield .
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385,521 | 391,152 | 288,477 | 5 |
Half and half
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Now this I would call exactly an average film . For me , it landed precisely at the very center of imdb's 10 point scale , right at 5 . 5 . This means that I found exactly as much to like as I did to dislike . There is a bit of inspiration here , but just as much that's stolen from other better horror movies . If it had opted for tone and real fear instead of cheap shocks , the movie could have been great . The story is good enough that it could have been great if handled well . But we do live in these times , and , although there are scholars of the modern era who would try to have us believe that the current generation consists of a bunch of kids who get everything instantly and process it on a billion levels at once , the truth is indeed the exact opposite . No , there is no subtlety here . It would go over your average teenager's head in a heartbeat . Nope , better play it safe and provide us with a gruesome scene up front where a couple of dozen people are sliced in half by a loose cable during a ball . Gore is not scary . I did however produce a dry heave during this sequence , which is more than I can say for any other gore scene that I've viewed lately . As the gore accumulates , I began to appreciate the artistry that was put into the enormous number of deaths . These are some sickeningly creative people , let me tell you . Unfortunately , the director ( or screenwriters or whoever ) ruins any real potential by revealing every detail about what happened on the titular boat in a fast-motion sequence accompanied by techno music ! It's the kind of moment where you just slap your head for the lack of talent involved . And then there was more stuff I liked . For example , the art direction is very impressive . The revelation of one character's identity , while not particularly surprising , is at least somewhat new . I give this film a , rounding down because I felt the final moment was a bit groan-inducing .
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385,031 | 391,152 | 444,682 | 5 |
Has a few decent ideas , but the results are mediocre , at best
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Not quite as terrible as I had heard , but most definitely mediocre . There are some good ideas that hint that it could have been a decent horror movie , perhaps if it had a better director . Stephen Hopkins is a pretty big hack , his credits including the abysmal Lost in Space and the not - that - bad - but - not - that - great - either thriller Blown Away ( the Jeff Bridges movie , not the one with the Cories ) . Hilary Swank plays a former missionary who has lost her faith and now works at debunking miracles . She is recruited by a small Louisiana town that is apparently being revisited by Old Testament plagues , starting with their river turning into blood . The town is blaming it on an untrusted household out on the bayou , which they think may be involved in Satanic rituals . In particular , they fear the 12 year-old girl who lives out there ( played by AnnaSophia Robb of Bridge to Terabithia ) . The film is definitely silly , and it's annoyingly religious ? which doesn't make too much sense , as the fundamentalists it seems to want to appeal to would avoid it like the , ahem , plague because of its violence and nastiness . But it never reaches the abysmal and insulting level of , say , The Exorcism of Emily Rose , and that angle can work well , like in , say , The Exorcist . But I quite liked the bayou atmosphere , which seems perfectly suited to a horror movie . The plague of locusts sequence is not bad , although it would have worked a lot better if they weren't such phony-looking CGI . And Swank is good . I always wonder how history will see her . She's one of the worst whores in the movie industry right now , and clearly does almost all of her films for money . In 2007 alone , she made three utterly forgettable films , the other two being P . S . I Love You and Freedom Writers . She's won two Oscars , both for dressing like men . Both were entirely justifiable , too ( although she wouldn't be near my top choice in 2004 ) . But in between those two films she made The Core , a movie about a crew of scientists drilling to the center of the Earth in order to make it start spinning again , and which included the line " So you want me to hack the Earth ? " Come to think of it , I really need to see that movie some day . The trailer had me on the floor . In 2009 , Swank will be dressing like a man once again when she plays Amelia Earhart for Mira Nair . I can almost guarantee an Oscar nomination .
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385,616 | 391,152 | 56,331 | 5 |
Crap , but interesting crap
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An intriguing piece of history , but not at all a good film . Panic in Year Zero is the story of a nuclear family living in the aftermath of a nuclear attack . It's fun to wonder what audiences at the time thought of it , themselves , we imagine , living with the fear of a nuclear attack . I'm guessing it wasn't even considered much at the time , seeing as it's relatively unknown now . It's very cheap-seeming , and poorly written . The most notable bits of silliness come when two sets of characters who were introduced earlier in the film pop up later to encounter the protagonists in a place far removed from their first appearances . That , or the fact that fugitives from a nuked L . A . stop to get breakfast at a roadside diner and whine about their being out of eggs . I love the way the classic American family is depicted . Ray Milland , who directs and stars , is the patriarch determined to keep his family together . The script thought a post-apocalyptic America would immediately dissolve and that it would be everyone for themselves . And I don't think the script feels that that's the scary part , just the necessary part . Milland doesn't even make much attempt at civilization . The movie is only a half a step removed from being a satire on American selfishness . Late in the film , the drama becomes somewhat more potent when Milland's daughter is attacked , and he and his son ( teen idol Frankie Avalon , who racks up a couple of kills with his trusty shotgun ) save a teenage girl who's being held hostage by three rapists . Jean Hagen , a decade removed from the cinema firmament , is unrecognizable as a stereotypical ' 50s housewife . A weird time capsule of a movie , for sure .
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385,300 | 391,152 | 149,691 | 5 |
Meandering mother and daughter melodrama
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Anywhere But Here was decent , but could have been a lot better . It gets bogged down with melodramatic moments that pop up randomly from time to time . The struggles of the mother and daughter could have been dramatic enough without these things . I liked the premise . Perhaps the biggest reason the film fails , though , is Susan Surandon . Am I the only person on Earth who sees that she is a terrible actress ? She overacts even the simplest scenes . So Natalie Portman has the job of holding the entire film together , and she just can't do it . I love her . She is the reason that I endured this film . But there're just too many things going wrong with it for her to be able to save it with her understated , realistic style .
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385,708 | 391,152 | 75,848 | 5 |
Interesting and silly at the same time
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Strange , and it has some interesting bits , but it's dull and nonsensically plotted . Gerard Depardieu and Marcello Mastroinanni make asses of themselves , and Gail Lawrence , better known under her porn name , Abigail Clayton , is naked for about 50 % of the film . Depardieu plays a boy toy in New York City . One day his friend , played by Mastroianni , is walking along the beach when he discovers the corpse of King Kong , whose orphaned baby he gets Depardieu to adopt . The themes involve the ever-changing gender roles , and this could have been very interesting . Unfortunately , it has no real plot to speak of , and it just meanders from weird scene to weird scene . Sometimes , the visuals are quite haunting , especially when the characters are on the beach with the New York cityscape towering over them and the giant ape corpse dominating the bottom of the frame . .
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385,626 | 391,152 | 73,915 | 5 |
Dissenting review
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One of the more famous African films , Xala comes from Senegalese director Ousmane Sembene , who had a well liked film that saw fairly wide release last year called Moolaadé . Moolaadé , for some reason , hasn't been released on DVD yet in the US , and , so far , it doesn't look like there's any imminent release . New Yorker video has provided us with two new DVDs from Sembene , this and Mandabi . Xala tells the story of a corrupt government official , El Hadji , who marries his third wife using pilfered funds . When El Hadji goes to consummate his marriage , he finds out he has been cursed with impotence , a curse known as xala . The historical context is slightly after Senegal's independence is achieved , and there are obvious metaphoric meanings of the impotence . The story and the politics behind it are rather interesting , and if I were the type to judge films solely on their politics I'd call this a good one . Unfortunately , the film moves so ungodly slowly that it is next to impossible to sit through . It runs for slightly over two hours , but has only about half that much material . I might recommend it to those interested in the history or just the region , but the rewards are limited . In short , it's a chore .
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385,868 | 391,152 | 41,546 | 5 |
Wow , am I ever on a different page for this film !
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I can't say I hated it , but I found it an extremely lame and tired attempt at wit . It tries so damned hard to be clever , but never succeeds . The biggest obstacle is the main character and the actor who plays him , Dennis Price . I can't think of a more boring protagonist in any film I've ever seen . He's so dull he almost put me to sleep . And the gimmick of multiple roles with Alec Guinness . It should have worked ; I think Guinness could have done wonders with his eight parts . But no , his segments are so thinly written that all eight roles are imminently forgettable . I mean , the very funny picture of Guinness in a dress for the one female role he plays is completely squandered . Not only does Lady Agatha D'Ascoyne get a mere one minute on screen , she doesn't even get a single line ! If it weren't enough that Alec Guinness is wasted eight times over , the wonderful Valerie Hobson is equally wasted . The sole performer who pulls off their role is Joan Greenwood , and even she's not great . I seriously cannot see how people find this movie worthwhile . .
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385,181 | 391,152 | 59,017 | 5 |
When Lee Marvin stinks in a movie , you know it sucks !
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I don't know exactly what it is , but I found this movie very grating . I only laughed a couple of times , almost exclusively during the train robbery sequence . I cringed much more often . It's very disappointing , as I loved the opening sequence and couldn't get enough of Nat King Cole and Stubby Kaye , who provide running commentary in song . The film is also well made , well directed , and well shot . And , damn , Jane Fonda has the cinema's nicest behind , I think . I was also particularly disappointed in Lee Marvin . I love him as an actor , and his role here won him his only Academy Award nomination , and he won . It's quite obvious that he won the award for his collected earlier works , for which the Academy was far too cowardly to give him . Let's face it : drunks aren't funny . I did giggle a bit at the shot of him and his horse sleeping against a wall , but that's about all . He also plays the evil gunslinger , as well , but this dual role is nothing but a gimmick . The man in the black hat is barely in the film . The film gets no mileage out of him , and the most he can do is impersonate Jack Palance from Shane . It's truly sad to see Liberty Valance , the meanest S . O . B . I can think of , reduced to not one but two paltry roles .
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385,346 | 391,152 | 54,749 | 5 |
Rather weak , considering its grave subject matter ;
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Vittorio de Sica's _ Two Women _ is mostly about the hardships of war ( WWII ) on normal people . Sophia Loren is a mother who takes her daughter away from the daily bombings in Rome to her childhood home . She is pretty good as the exasperated mother . Maybe not deserving of an award , but she is good . The other very famous actor in the cast is Jean-Paul Belmondo . Both of these actors could have done a lot better if the script were up to par . Both characters are quite superficially stereotypical , and their big scenes are all over the map . I think that is a good phrase for this film , all over the map . Themes are very weakly held throughout , so it feels meandering . By the end , nothing is accomplished . All I could think of were better films that dealt with similar subjects . This is incredibly unfortunate , seeing that de Sica and his screenwriter Zavattini concocted two of the best films of the 1940s , The Bicycle Thieves and Umberto D . SPOILERSThose who love the movie are probably wishing to crucify me right now , since I am criticizing a film in which the central episode is a rape . But really , I did not dislike the film before this scene . Although I felt it meandered , I liked it . But when Loren and her daughter are raped , the movie fell apart . Let me say this : just because such a heavy subject is dealt with does not make the movie great . I felt this scene , this plot point , was handled extraordinarily poorly . Instead of seeming horrific , it seemed completely exploitative . After the deed , Loren , certainly a beautiful woman , walks around with her cleavage popping out for the rest of the film . I did not feel that she and her daughter have been destroyed by this incident . Instead , it feels more like an unfortunate thing that happens to them on their journey . The reason for this is that the film ends only about ten minutes later . Since everything before the rape scene had been dealt with more successfully in previous films , I believe the best choice would have been to open the story right before the rape , and have them deal with it afterwards . That way , the gravity of the situation would have hit better . Just randomly , I watched two films tonight that had to do with rape . This one , and right before it , Ingmar Bergman's The Virgin Spring . The Virgin Spring hit me like a sledgehammer , whereas Two Women left me squirming with disappointment . The major difference between the two is that The Virgin Spring had a theme , a point . It went somewhere with the horrible event . Two Women just believed it would be powerful because it happened . I may sympathize , but I have little empathy , since I do not know what they felt .
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385,192 | 391,152 | 89,715 | 5 |
One of the very few Altman films I didn't like
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Definitely one of Altman's worst , though perhaps not quite as bad as some may lead you to believe . The producer wanted Altman to make a teen comedy in the vein of Porky's or something . Altman hated those kinds of movies , and decided to make a parody of one instead . Unfortunately , you just can't make a parody of a comedic genre . It never works . O . C . and Stiggs comes off as just a wacky teen comedy as directed by Altman ; the only difference is that the characters are slightly more obnoxious and , instead of being fun anti-heroes , they're detestable . Which makes for a rather unpleasant movie . The script ( or Altman's alterations ? he apparently hated the script as written , so who knows how much he changed it ) is extremely sloppy as well , especially as it nears the end . There are some amusing moments along the way , so it's not a total bust . It does contain one of the funniest dialogue exchanges I've ever heard : " How would you like to have more fun than you've ever had in your life ? " " I don't know . I've had a lot of fun . I have Legos , you know . "
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385,136 | 391,152 | 367,594 | 5 |
Just stick with the 1971 version
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I feel sorry for any kid who has this forced upon him or her when a near perfect version of this book already exists on film . It's not that Burton's film is totally awful . It looks nice and is occasionally amusing . However , it has little or no reason to exist . If Johnny Depp had not been allowed by Burton to make some truly awful acting decisions , the film might have been more watchable . I'm a Depp supporter , but I'll loudly say that he gives the year's worst lead performance . The kids are all pretty good , but the only one who could stand next to her 1971 counterpart would be AnnaSophia Robb as Violet Beauregarde , the gum-chewing champion who turns into a giant blueberry . I also liked the woman who played her mom . The Oompa Loompa songs are crappy , and I really missed some of the other songs from the ' 71 version ( most notably " I Want It Now " , the original's best scene ) . One new sequence I did like was Willy Wonka's flashback to when he found the Oompa Loompas . Most of the rest of it is worthless .
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384,796 | 391,152 | 169,222 | 5 |
Weak action / comedy based on a manga
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Tadanobu Asano stars , but really anyone could have played any character in this film , they're all so two-dimensional . Asano has stolen money from a yakuza boss , who now , along with his comic-bookish henchmen , is out to get him . Along the way , Asano hooks up with a shy woman . The film does contain a few really good scenes . I could actually forgive it for being shallow if it were more fun than it is . Unfortunately , what makes it really bad is that , for most of its run , the film is just damn boring . Some of the scenes drag out forever . The faster paced bits are more tolerable , and this might have been cool if it were more like a Ryuhei Kitamura film . Another problem is that , while the story is mostly very straightforward , there are occasions where it becomes incoherent . Which made me lose interest even more . Skip it .
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385,522 | 391,152 | 28,510 | 5 |
John Wayne cheapie
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Not bad , just incredibly dull . Wayne and partner Lane Chandler try to start a stagecoach route through a ghost town . A rival stagecoach company tries to stop them . Some of the stuff near the beginning of the film is okay , and the lead actress is cute and looks a bit like Ginger Rogers . The final action sequence put me to sleep . .
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384,617 | 391,152 | 97,442 | 5 |
God help us !
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I think this was made for HBO during a time of huge scandals in televangelism . It has the same consistency of an HBO movie : unsubtle , poorly acted , and generic . It's not a bad movie , especially for that origin . However , when a director like Anderson has directed it , I expected a little better . The direction is so bad , though , it's truly , truly embarrassing . The film is about a failing evangelist who hires a sexy singer to spice up his services . She steals the show from him . I don't know , I couldn't finish it . Like I said , it's not awful , but I just figured that life was too short to watch something so unaccomplished . Plus , Christian rock , which is abundant in the film , is the second worst genre of music on the planet , right after Christian ska . P . S . If you're looking for this , it actually has been on VHS before , despite what previous comments have said . Orion put it out . I found it in my library system . But , really , you don't want to see this , at least if you're a fan of Lindsay Anderson . Only if you're a completist , but it's just an embarrassment .
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385,334 | 391,152 | 41,687 | 5 |
Not good , but with a couple of points of interest
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Lame musical comedy starring Esther Williams and Ricardo Montalbahn . Williams plays a bathing suit designer who wants to protect her sister , Betty Garrett , from Montalbahn , a polo star and Lothario whom Garrett has fallen for . Really , though , Garrett has fallen for Red Skelton , who pretends to be Montalbahn . While Williams thinks she's keeping Montalbahn occupied , the two , as you expect , fall in love . Williams is a pretty boring actress , famously only " something " when she's wet , and she's kept out of the water for 95 % of the movie , and they even cut away from what promises to be an epic water ballet in the final moments . The only amusing moments come between Skelton and Garrett , though their antics never rise above slightly amusing . They have good chemistry , though . It's too bad their studio didn't recognize it at the time , because they should have been paired again . There are two bits of interest in the film : first , it won the Oscar for best song , Frank Loesser's " Baby , It's Cold Outside " . Now there's a trivia question ! The song doesn't even make sense in the movie . As far as I could tell , the movie takes place in California . Even if I'm incorrect on that , it certainly was never cold in the movie , and why would someone even write a song about the cold and snowstorms for an Esther Williams movie ? Weird . It's a great song , of course , and the best part of the film . Both couples sing it in full back to back , with Garrett and Skelton reversing the roles the second time around . The second thing , there's this one character in the movie named Pancho , who works for the polo team or something . When he began to talk , I was thinking , " Wow , what a stereotypical accent . Sounds just like Speedy Gonzales . " Then , " Wow , really a lot like Speedy Gonzales . Wait a second ? that actor looks like ? " Yes , it was ! Mel Blanc , playing a guy who sounds just like Speedy Gonzales . I didn't know Mel Blanc did anything live action .
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384,894 | 391,152 | 76,141 | 5 |
The worst possible outcome of a decent concept
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Mel Brooks has had his stinkers , some much worse than this ( Dracula : Dead and Loving it being by far his lowest point ) , but this came at the end of an era of great comedic successes for him . It's only four years after Young Frankenstein , for instance , which is one of the funniest films I've ever seen . And the concept of this film , a spoof of Hitchcock films , seems like gold . There's more than a dozen well known films and a hundred well known sequences that Brooks could have parodied . For some reason , he forgets to do it through a good 75 % of the film , only parodying Vertigo , Psycho , the Birds , and Marnie with one or two throw-aways to North by Northwest . They are all from late Hitchcock , and the only one I may be missing is the Jimmy Stewart version of The Man Who Knew Too Much , probably the only major Hitch film I haven't seen . But these films are only mentioned a little , besides Vertigo , which is , more or less , the basis for 90 % of all the parody . There's a take off of Psycho's shower scene , some pigeons poo on Brooks , and there is a flashback near the end that seems to be parodying Marnie . None of those parodies work . Almost none of the rest of the jokes work , either . Cloris Leachman is the only person on screen who ever gets a single laugh , as Nurse Diesel , the wack-job , manly , conniving , dominatrix , but she's trying so hard that she only managed to make me laugh a couple of times . I don't even know what Madelaine Kahn is doing here , although the phone booth / obscene phone call scene was one of the couple of scenes that made me laugh . I hope Hitchcock never actually saw this . I wouldn't be so mean as to call it an insult to his films , but it certainly stands as a major embarrassment to Mel Brooks who can't even demonstrate in his direction that he understands WHY Alfred Hitchcock is " the master of suspense , " as he calls him in the kindly dedication . .
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384,648 | 391,152 | 327,554 | 5 |
1200 + 1 point votes ? Get a life , people , it wasn't that bad !
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I scored a free ticket to this movie , and I thought , hey , I've wasted my whole life up to now , what's another hundred and forty-one minutes ? After all , I have a higher tolerance for crap than most people , and , once in a while , I like to see something that completely sucks . According to the critics and to voters on IMDb , Catwoman is supposed to suck bad . Fortunately , or unfortunately , depending on how you look at it , the movie really doesn't suck . I mean , yeah , it sucks , but it hardly plumbs the depths of true suckitude . Currently it sits at # 35 on the IMDb bottom 100 , but I can think of way more than 34 other movies that suck far worse than Catwoman . It is much more fair to say that it is a mediocre , perhaps slightly below average , action film . It has a few pros and lots of cons . The cons first : 1 ) The jumpy editing is awful . 2 ) Way too much CGI . Same problem with the 500 pound gorilla comic book movie out right now , as well . CGI is probably the worst thing ever to happen to cinema ; it's hard to believe people are worshiping a technique that looks more fake than stop-motion . 3 ) Benjamin Bratt is a horrible actor , and the ugliest handsome man I've ever seen . 4 ) How the fck did Alex Borstein land a movie role ? She should be doomed to die on MAD TV , the longest running train wreck of a show ever . 5 ) Crappy , crappy script . The pros : 1 ) The film looks wonderful , even though that's due mostly to the CGI ( I guess when it's making buildings and inanimate objects like that , it's not so bad ) . The costume design , even apart from the Catwoman outfit . And if they gave out Oscars to hair stylists , the ones who worked on this film would have no competition . 2 ) Sharon Stone ? not a great performance , by any means . Her character is downright silly , perhaps even nonsensical . But she's gorgeous and has a great presence . She makes a really boring villain somewhat more interesting . 3 ) Duh ! Halle Berry ! She might not have the best ability to choose roles . Perhaps she's just obsessed with money , and now that she's got a statuette , she's going to do everything in her power to become a billionaire . Whatever you can say about her , she's a great actress . Last year , she brought Gothika up a notch , and she does a lot to make Catwoman more entertaining than it ought to be . She plays the characters ' two halves , the sweet , insecure girl and the dominatrix , very well . And , come on , I'd be lying if I said I didn't go to the movie because I thought Berry would be walking around in a leather outfit for a good portion of the movie . And , damn , she's hot . This makes the movie watchable , if nothing else . There's a shot where the camera circles Berry from toe to head right after she first dons the Catwoman which was worth the price of me embarrassing myself by handing my free pass over to the cute little theater girl at the counter . .
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385,210 | 391,152 | 27,672 | 5 |
I'd bet that I'm in the minority , but I just found this one a bore
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A bust . As disinterested as I often am in Mizoguchi's films , Sisters of the Gion effectively knocked me unconscious . Some of the acting seemed decent , as did some of the direction . The opening shots were great . But then it slows down to a crawl that I just couldn't withstand . This is the first of his films that I was just not able to take . The couple of Mizoguchi films that I really like are Life of Oharu and Sansho the Bailiff ( and Ugetsu's pretty good , as well ) , so if you haven't seen those ones , do so . .
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384,804 | 391,152 | 417,976 | 5 |
Terrible special effects and poor direction ruin a promising film
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This wuxia epic is more fantastical than the other ones that have been widely distributed . It's more or less a fairy story about a princess who falls in love with a slave when she mistakes him for his master , a great general . There are gods and a sexually ambiguous fairy tale villain ( who carries around a scepter that looks like one of Borat's sex toys ) , and all kinds of magic and stuff like that . Really , it's a pretty good story . Too bad the movie that tells it isn't very good . Chen Kaige is a pretty good director of the kind of middlebrow movies that , if made in America , would be Oscar frontrunners . He shows absolutely no talent for telling this kind of story , or directing action sequences . You really have to work hard to follow what's going on , even though the story isn't at all complicated . The worst thing about the film is the special effects . I haven't seen CGI this bad since that Dire Straits video . With a director more suited to the material and better effects , this could have been a great movie . As it is , it's lame .
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385,019 | 391,152 | 475,298 | 5 |
It's hilariously awful
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Maybe the best bad movie of 2006 . It's an amateurish horror anthology hosted by Snoop Dogg . The stories are dumb and often nonsensical , but there's enough amusing stuff to make it worthwhile . Any movie where Snoop Dogg blows a chihuahua into smithereens or where a gangsta impales himself on his own forty has to be worth at least something ! The second segment of three ( not counting the terribly animated opening ) is by far the most entertaining , where a redneck trust fund kid , subtly named Tex Jr . and partly modeled after the President ( played by Anson Mount ) , has to move in with some old black veterans who served under his father in Vietnam . Mount's performance is as offensive as anything Stepin Fetchit could ever produce , but it's just so damn funny . Recognizable actors include Billy Dee Williams ( aka Lando Calrissian ) , Ernie Hudson ( aka Winston Zedmore , the black Ghostbuster ) , Danny Trejo ( the Columbian knife thrower from Desperado ) , Jason Alexander ( George from Seinfeld ) , Aries Spears ( a player on MAD TV ) and Lin Shaye ( the ugly woman from Kingpin and There's Something About Mary , and she's a surprisingly attractive older woman in real life , apparently ) . If you like bad movies , check it out when it hits video . If you actually want a watchable urban horror film , check out Tales from the Hood .
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385,950 | 391,152 | 419,946 | 5 |
Lots and lots of booms
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A perfect dumb action movie for the Fourth of July weekend , because it features a heroic military guy and a whole lot of explosions . It's not too bad if you like that kind of movie . John Cena , a WWE wrestler , stars as the titular Marine . The film opens in Tikrit , where he rescues a bunch of his friends who are being held by terrorists . The scene plays hilariously just like the opening of The Naked Gun . I half expected Cena to yell at the terrorists as he left their base , " Don't let me catch any of you guys in America ! " After that , Cena returns home to South Carolina and his hot wife ( Kelly Carlson ) . He has a hard time settling down in his new life , where very few things explode and the best you can do is smash someone through a window or something . Luckily , he runs into bad guy Robert Patrick at the gas station , whose gang kidnaps his wife to use as a hostage . Finally , explosions return to his life . It's really hard to think of a 90 minute movie with more or bigger explosions . Cena is kind of a dull guy , but he certainly can beat the hell out of people when it's called for . Patrick is the best thing about the movie . The wacky , über-evil villain is a staple of action movies , but this one is particularly entertaining .
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385,957 | 391,152 | 89,348 | 5 |
Commies hate children
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Hilariously bad Chuck Norris vehicle , which is kind of redundant , I know . Not only does Norris star , he also co-wrote the script . He plays a retired member of " the agency " who is called back into action , reluctantly , when a group of communist terrorists , lead by Richard Lynch , invade US soil . The communists ' plan : to blow crap up and shoot people at random . They wander around Florida looking for American-looking locales , and then they start firing bazookas at everybody and everything . The movie particularly loves putting children in danger , because , you know , commies hate children more than anything . Get a busload of children , have them sing " Row , Row , Row Your Boat " and commies are bound to try to blow it up with a time bomb . Like most bad movies , it's only really bad because it's frequently boring . But the action sequences are a hoot , and there are several laugh-out-loud moments . Worth watching , if you love bad movies .
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385,782 | 391,152 | 871,426 | 5 |
Forgettable
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The kind of movie that's really hard to remember having seen mere hours after leaving the theater . I'd call it a made-for-TNT movie . SNL alumnae Tina Fey and Amy Poehler star as a successful businesswoman and a white trash girl respectively . Fey hires Poehler to carry her baby to birth , as she cannot conceive . Most of the best jokes were spoiled by the numerous commercials and previews . Even if that were not true , most of them are pretty weak anyway and their success depends completely on the actors . Fey and Poehler succeed , for the most part , both playing personae that anyone who watched their work on SNL has already seen . I'd actually say the film would have been pretty close to intolerable if Poehler had not been so funny . I don't think that woman could be unfunny if she tried . But , yeah , I'd recommend skipping it , or at least waiting for television .
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384,631 | 391,152 | 37,514 | 5 |
One of Hollywood's worst musicals
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Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra play sailors on leave who get mixed up with Kathryn Grayson . They promise her an audition with musical director José Iturbi ( playing himself ) in order to get her in good with Sinatra , but the two sailors are unable to procure such an audition . Predictably , Kelly begins to fall for Grayson instead , but , luckily , the second female lead ( Pamela Britton ) attracts Sinatra's attention . This was the first iteration of this formula , which was used again in the other Kelly / Sinatra pairings Take Me Out to the Ball Game and On the Town , but the other two films did it better . Yes , even Take Me Out to the Ball Game . The difference ? Ball Game wraps up its plot in an efficient 93 minutes , and has a few memorable songs ( along with several very unmemorable ones ) . Anchors Aweigh runs for two hours and twenty minutes with this hackneyed plot . The songs are more in line with Sinatra's early crooning days , and several of the musical numbers here consist of classical music ( not to knock classical music or anything , but it's just not what I want when watching a Hollywood musical ) . The film is best known for Gene Kelly's dance with MGM's Jerry the Mouse . That sequence is great . I also very much like the adorable Grayson , and the set design is often excellent . Otherwise , it's completely forgettable .
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385,856 | 391,152 | 126,886 | 5 |
Well , put this one in the " Overrated " files
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I admit that some parts of this movie did make me laugh , and it was true to high school , but I thought the writing was sloppy . The direction was extremely amateurish . 1 . Voiceovers almost never work , and they never work if more than one character is narrating . I can only think of one : Goodfellas . But that had two characters narrating , while this film had four , one of them being completely unimportant ( the sister of the jock , who drops out halfway through the film ) . 2 . The character of Tracy Flick had a lot of contradictory personality traits . She was a nerd , yet she was popular enough to win an election . She's extremely overbearing ( and it does show in her actions ) , yet she's popular enough to win an election . She was a hard-working nerd , yet she sleeps with a teacher . These are three very harsh contradictory pairs . 3 . The updates at the end were very amateurish . I don't know how this got nominated for best adapted screenplay , a movie with this sloppy a screenplay . Well , so did Cider House Rules , which I also thought was only worth .
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385,267 | 391,152 | 54,892 | 5 |
Lame
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Fairly uninteresting , but not particularly offensive . This is the most complete , most straightforward Francis of Assissi movie out of the four I've recently watched ( including The Flowers of St . Francis ( Rossellini ) , Brother Sun , Sister Moon ( Zeffirelli ) & Francesco ( Cavani ) ) . Somewhere in the middle of the film , I brought up the Wikipedia page about the saint , and it read pretty much like the script of this movie . The production is quite nice , but one would think the tale of a man who chose to live his life in poverty wouldn't concentrate so much on sets and costumes . Bradford Dillman is forgettable as Francis . Stuart Whitman plays his rival for Clare's love ( of course , Clare's love for Francis is purely religious ) . The addition of this love triangle is perfectly representative of old Hollywood's frequent ridiculousness . The only person who really rises to the occasion is Dolores Hart as Clare . She's quite good . Two years after this film was made , she actually became a nun . She's a member of AMPAS and is the only nun who votes for the Oscars .
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384,784 | 391,152 | 80,736 | 5 |
Good concept , poorly executed
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The kind of movie that has a pretty good idea at its center , but doesn't do all that much with it . That idea is that a modern day aircraft carrier runs into a wormhole and ends up in the Pacific on December 6th , 1941 . Should they stop the bombing of Pearl Harbor , or should they not reveal their presence , lest they change history ? Unfortunately , most of the movie consists of the characters figuring out what has happened , and no one really asks the kinds of important questions you'd think they would . The cast is good , including Kirk Douglas , Martin Sheen , Katharine Ross and Charles Durning , but none of them has much to do . Sheen in particular , what was the point of his character ? He adds little to the movie , except that he is Martin Sheen and Martin Sheen is pretty awesome . Just out of curiosity , I checked out Roger Ebert's review of the movie . Hilariously , he reveals the ending and every secret the movie has in the second paragraph . He also doesn't seem to understand the concept of time travel whatsoever . Was this like the first time travel movie ever ? He is right that it's not very good . I'd say more forgettable than bad , though .
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385,602 | 391,152 | 32,155 | 5 |
My least favorite Ford film
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Sad to say , but this was the first John Ford movie that I did not like ( and I've seen more than 20 ) . This is the story of Abraham Lincoln's first trial as a defense attorney , working on behalf of two young men who were accosted by a deputy brandishing a pistol . Henry Fonda does not give one of his better performances as Lincoln . He seems uncomfortable , and looks particularly terrible in his make-up . Of the other actors in the film , the only two worth mentioning are Donald Meek , who plays the prosecuting attorney , and Ward Bond , the victim's best friend and a witness to the crime . The prologue to the film is corny , as is a lot of the rest of the film . I'm not a fan of courtroom dramas , and this aspect of Young Mr . Lincoln is one of the worst examples of that genre that I can think of . People often criticize Ford for injecting ill-fitting humor into his pictures , but I was never bothered by anything like that until this film . Lincoln is constantly cracking jokes , and the jury and audience are always laughing uproariously at them . The only scene I thought was really successful was the one where Lincoln stops the lynch mob . That dialogue is very good . Otherwise , I was very disappointed in this one . .
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384,604 | 391,152 | 51,016 | 5 |
Ambitious but wrongheaded film philosophizing man's worth in the universe
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The Story of Mankind is a noble attempt to argue the case of humanity , whether he is inherently good or evil , as he has just developed the " super H bomb . " Vincent Price is at his best as the Devil arguing against humanity . It was a poor choice in general to reconstruct so many scenes of human history , especially since the screenwriter ( s ) changed the events so much as to make them unrecognizable . The casting is very odd and distracting in these sequences , too . The film is chock full of once-brilliant character actors like Agnes Moorhead , who embarrasses herself as Queen Elizabeth , and especially the Marx Brothers . I guess one of the biggest reasons you might want to see this is to see what Groucho , Harpo , and Chico looked like in technicolor ( which , if you remember Groucho in The Big Store , was too expensive for their earlier vehicles ) . They among the numerous actors retain their vaudville characters in this film . Groucho plays Peter Minuit , the man who fleeced Indians out of Manhattan island . He makes suggestive comments towards the chief's daughter , but none of them are funny . Chico is on screen for 30 seconds as a priest arguing about the shape of the world with Columbus ( he is the only one to retain his dignity in this movie ; at least his character was Italian ) . Harpo plays Isaac Newton in a particularly pathetic sequence . He starts to play his harp , and apples drop onto his head . Then he mugs for the camera . No Brother fell further from grace than Harpo . Basically , The Story of Mankind forgets its purpose , worrying too much about the elaborate recreations than the philosophical argument . This plot could have made a good film , I think . Its ending is one of ambiguity , which is where it should be . It tells us that the filmmakers did intend to make a serious film . I say that this is worth ignoring . For a better film with the same message , we all have and still love to watch The Day the Earth Stood Still . .
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385,630 | 391,152 | 70,121 | 5 |
Awful movie , but nice songs
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By all rights , a terrible , wicked movie . The Gospel According to Hippies , hippies played by several extraordinarily attractive young people who make cute faces and speak in cute voices . This film is proof that the late 60s and early 70s were the root of the current hyperactivity problem . Watching this film is like seeing ADHD getting invented before your eyes . Also , what's with David Haskell ? He plays John the Baptist , later turns into Judas Iscariot , and is obviously made up to look like the traditional Jesus . Why so confusing ? And I hope this doesn't spoil anyone's fun , but John the Baptist gets decapitated and Judas hangs himself in the Book , but Mr . Haskell gets to live on until the end . Look , I'm no Christian , but I can feel the power that exists in the story of Christ . Pier Paolo Pasolini's The Gospel According to Matthew , the definitive film adapted from the Bible , brought me to tears . Godspell effectively sits on the Holy Book and flatulates for an hour and forty minutes . You could not imagine a less respectful adaptation . Yet , I couldn't totally hate this movie . It does pull itself together for its final twenty minutes or so , and rediscovers some of the power in the original writings . It's also a musical , and , as a musical , it contains some great songs . I'd say that there really are only a handful of movie musicals with really amazing songs , and Godspell is one of them . In the end , a .
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385,598 | 391,152 | 37,630 | 5 |
Not Bresson
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Disappointing on a couple of major fronts , as a Bresson film and as a Cocteau script . This was Bresson's second film . Five years later , he made the first film in his signature style , Diary of a Country Priest . Dames is much more conventional in its style and content . A society woman tricks her former lover into falling in love and marrying a former cabaret dancer ( a Hollywood-like front for prostitution ) . The film is pretty , but dull as Hell . Elina Labourdette , who plays Agnes the dancer , is excellent ( and she sure can dance ) , but the rest of the cast is lifeless . I can't believe Jean Cocteau worked on this script . For curiosity's sake only . .
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385,264 | 391,152 | 1,068,649 | 5 |
French award bait that's pretty poorly written ( though , I admit , well performed )
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You've got to be kidding me ! If this were an American film , it would be dismissed outright by many as Oscar bait . As it is now , it should be dismissed as Cesar bait . I think , if it were a French language film without the stunt casting of a famous English actress , it would also be dismissed . Anyhow , the point is , it should be dismissed . It's just not that good of a film . Yes , Kristen Scott Thomas is quite good as a woman recently released from prison after a 15 year stint . Elsa Zylberstein , playing the little sister who was forced by her parents to forget about Thomas , is actually quite a bit better . But , yeah , between those two , the film doesn't lack in the acting department . But the script ! Oh , the script ! The film would be good or great if it were all about the relationship between the two sisters . It's definitely at its best when it concentrates on relationships . The screenplay is so awful , though . Claudel writes it as an ongoing mystery . First it's " Where has this woman been ? " That lasts for about ten minutes . After that the mystery is , " What has she done ? " This is left untold for about thirty minutes . And then comes the big one , " Why ? " They keep that one covered up for the rest of the film . But that's pretty much the only thing you think about for ninety minutes . Even when the characters are growing , it's hard to care about anything else . I mean , after all , that " why " is going to go a long way toward understanding Thomas ' character . The fact is , when you do actually find out " why " , it's extremely dumb , as well as completely unbelievable . But I would have been bothered even if Thomas ' " why " had been good . The structure of the film is rather annoying . By the end , the film feels like a complete waste .
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384,970 | 391,152 | 206,601 | 5 |
Throwaway Fellini
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When The Voyage of G . Mastorna came to a halt in 1968 , Federico Fellini began plans to film a version of Petronius ' Satyricon . In between the two films , he quickly put together this hour-long semi-documentary for NBC . It is an unwieldy and somewhat nonsensical 50 minutes ( the running time without commercials ) that might as well be forgotten by everyone except Fellini biographers and fanatics ( and I am certainly one of the latter ) . So what is there of worth here ? The best scene is the interview with Marcello Mastrioanni , who exploits to the hilt his reputation as a Grade-A Womanizer in a scene that resembles the scene in Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless where a group of reporters , Jean Seberg among them , interview a novelist played by the film director Jean-Pierre Melville . The tiniest bit of The Voyage of G . Mastorna is also shown , and some of its ideas are expressed , which is always interesting . If you've never heard of this film , well , that's because it doesn't exist . Fellini developed director's block during its early stages . It was to be about a cellist's journeys in the afterlife . Much of his loss of reputation during this period was a result of its scrapping and the enormous amount of money lost by the producers , among whom , I believe , was Dino de Laurentiis , Fellini's frequent collaborator and arch-enemy . Another point of interest is an interview with the spiritual medium Genius . I haven't seen it for years , but I believe he co-stars in Giulietta of the Spirits . In reality , as far as the word " reality " works in this situation , Genius was Fellini's personal medium . It was partly because of his predictions that Fellini scrapped Mastorna . The rest of the film closely resembles Fellini-Roma , which might just be my least favorite Fellini film . This semi-documentary ends with footage from the shooting of Fellini-Satyricon ( which is another of my least favorite ; however , I need to see these two and Giulietta again ; they're the only features I do dislike at the moment ) . The documentary is to be found on the new Criterion DVD of 8 . 5 . .
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385,831 | 391,152 | 130,827 | 5 |
I hated this movie . Don't buy the hype
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People are saying that this is one of the best movies of this decade , but I thought it was god awful . It is nothing but an 81 minute Music Video . There is a point , but the director obviously didn't care much about it . The point is that every little thing that happens to us can have a profound effect on our lives . It's been done before and much better . Take Krystof Kieslowski's Three Colors : Red . It is a movie about a friendship that would have never happened if the main character had not turned the station on her radio . Lola Rennt is a movie that would and does impress beginning film buffs . I think we more seasoned buffs can tell that it's just a great example of style without content .
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