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MoosePiano
Reviews
The War of the Worlds (2005)
Gloriously awful
I'm not really sure how to even begin to describe how bad this movie is. I like bad films, as they are often the most entertaining. I love bad special effects, bad acting, bad music, and inept direction. With the exception of the music (which was better than I had expected), this movie had all of those qualities.
The special effects were amazingly bad. The worst I've seen since my Nintendo 64. Some scenes to watch for include the Thunderchild, the woman being crushed by the mechanical foot, the Big Ben scene, the train wreck... Wow, there are so many bad effects! On the plus side, though, SOME scenes of the alien walkers are well done.
The acting was about as bad as it could possibly have been, having been based directly on H.G. Wells' book. For having such good source material, it's almost as though the actors were trying to be so over-the-top as to make it funny. And then there's the mustache... the single most distracting piece of facial hair I've seen in a long time. Of course, only half the movie contains acting. The rest is characters walking around aimlessly and poorly rendered effects shots.
To say that Timothy Hines is an inept director would be an injustice to inept directors. With the use of different colored filters between shots for no particular reason, the use of poorly rendered backgrounds for even inside scenes, the bad green screening, it's amazing to me how this man ever got approval to direct a movie. I wouldn't imagine it would be possible to turn a brilliant book into this bad a movie. Bravo, Mr. Hines. Bravo.
My advice to anyone who plans to see this movie is to do what I did: have some friends who enjoy bad movies over, drink, play poker while watching it, keep drinking, and maybe you'll make it all the way through. It does make for an excellent bad movie, so have fun and laugh yourself silly with this disaster.
12 Angry Men (1957)
A look at justice
This movie is a masterful look into the workings of trial by jury. At the movie's opening all of the jurors are ready to send the defendant to the chair...except one (Fonda). He takes it upon himself to try to convince the other jurors that there is reasonable doubt that he committed the crime and thus potentially save an innocent man's life. Having never served on a jury, this movie made me think about how an innocent person can be saved by thoroughly examining all of the facts, rather then jumping to false conclusions. For anyone who hasn't seen it, it may boost your faith in the justice system and your fellow man.
The Blair Witch Project (1999)
A testament to good filmmaking.
I make amateur movies (in fact I'm working on a project right now called "The McCarthy Witch Hunt Project"). I loved this movie. I think I know, though, how people could have disliked it...IT WAS DIFFERENT. Anyone who makes amateur movies for fun would probably enjoy it. Anyone else,however, well that's a different story. I enjoyed the way that the filmmakers took practically unedited footage and created such a sense of desperation at the situation presented to the three characters. For a low-budget movie, this was EXTREMELY well executed. No special effects, no music, this movie was raw emotion and chaos. It leaves a lot to the imagination, which is good. This movie is definitely worth seeing if you make movies.