Reviews

One of the most original action sci-fi movies ever made, Highlander is a gritty and edgy urban fantasy film with a great script, fantastic stunts and swordplay, slick direction and an excellent cast. Don't even look twice at its two atrocious sequels; Highlander is the real deal. There can be only one.

Conner MacLeod is an immortal swordsman from the highlands of Scotland, a warrior who must live by the rules of the game that govern the lives of all other immortals on Earth. The only way Conner or other immortals can be killed is by decapitation, and when one immortal takes anothers head, he takes his energy and power as well. Conner has survived from the 1500's to the 1980's, taking the heads of enemy immortals in combat..but now only one other immortal is left on the planet: the sinister Kurgan, the ultimate master of the duel.

First of all, the cast is fantastic. Christopher Lambert stars here as Conner, the best role of his career, and veteran character actor Clancy Brown shines as the delivish Kurgan. Another great talent here is the one and only Sean Connery as Ramirez, an eccentric immortal who acted as MacLeod's mentor. Roxanne Hart is decent as the spunky forensic scientist Brenda, and Billy Hartman and James Cosmo are great as Conner's cousins Angus and Dugal.

Great sword battles abound here and the dark, noir undertone of the film combine to create an atmosphere of war in a jungle of metal and steel. Add in a great script, and skillful direction, and you've got an original, action-paced and fantastic piece of wicked cool cinema.

I give Highlander a 9 out of 10, and recommend it to any fans of gritty action science-fiction and fantasy adventure

Although he still directs with the same power and style that he has always held steadily in his grip, Steven Spielberg doesn't quite capture the same magic in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom that he transfixed on and illuminated in the original Raiders of the Lost Ark. Despite it not being quite the calibur of its predecessor, The Temple of Doom is still an exciting and fun adventure with a familiar and already well-loved hero.

Here our story begins with a madcap, high-wire sequence in which we're reintroduced to Indiana, his profession, and what he does best. We also meet Short Round, a young Asian boy who works for Indy, and a showgirl named Willie Scott who's gotten caught up in Dr.Jones' latest escapade. After a crazy scene involving a plummeting airplane and a flying inflatable raft, Indiana and his two compadres get involved in the problems of the local people, involving the brutal Thugee cult and a trio of mysterious and magical stones.

Harrison Ford is once again great as Indiana Jones, but who doesn't fare too well here is Kate Capshaw as Willie. Unlike the strong-willed Marion, Willie is simply the bumbling comic relief, which not only makes for a poor character in the first place, but the fact that Capshaw as no comic talent whatsoever makes it even worse. The true break-out talent here is John Ke Quan as Short Round, Indy's buddy. Quan has great comedic timing, and his smart-mouthed, choppy-English Short Round is probably one of the best child performances ever. Who would have thought that giving Indiana Jones a kid sidekick would acually be a good idea?

What does make Temple of Doom stand-out is its gory, extremely well-done action scenes, from thrilling mine cart chases to a fantastic stand-off on a stretching, collapsing bridge. This is what you are really come away remembering from this film.

While it doesn't live up to its brother ROTLA, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is a good-time for all, and if you're a fan of the original, you'll definately get a kick out of it.

I give The Temple of Doom an 7 out of 10, and I'd recommend it to any fan of high-adventure and people who loved the original Raiders of the Lost Ark

The ultimate peak of the adventure film, Raiders of the Lost Ark is a movie so masterfully-crafted that a type of magic seems to shine out from every frame. Steven Spielberg, one of the most talented directors of all time, has also given us some of the other greatest American movies ever made, from Jaws to Schindler's List, and in Raiders of the Lost Ark he shows us the film-making edge that has made him so extremely successful.

Raiders follows the exploits of Indiana Jones, part time archeology professor, full time fedora-wearing, pistol-slinging, whip-cracking adventurer. Set in the late 1930s, Jones is hired to track down the Biblical artifact known as the Ark of the Covenant, a chest in which the mythical Ten Commandments sent down by God are said to have been kept. The Nazis are after it too, their expedition led by the villainous Belloq, Indiana's career-long nemesis.

Everything about Raiders of the Lost Ark clicks in place with complete perfection. The script is fantastic and Spielberg's direction is flawless, a style which has influenced countless other movies since. The action sequences are heart-thumpingly exciting and full of edge-of-your-seat, such as the brilliant famous opening scene which introduces us to Indiana as he attempts to uncover a golden tribal idol.

The performances are all beyond excellence here as well. Harrison Ford creates one of the cinema's most memorable characters in the heroic Indiana Jones, a rugged warrior of the arts who all women love and who all men want to be. The beautiful Karen Allen is excellent as well as the two-fisted Marion Ravenwood, and Paul Freeman lends a smug sense of devilish satisfaction to each word he speaks. Other great performances include John Rhys-Davies as Jones' friend Sallah and Ronald Lacey as the cold, menacing Toht.

Raiders of the Lost Ark is one of the best movie experiences a film fan can ever have, and it deserves its place among the best ever.

I give Raiders a 10 out of 10, and I recommend it to any and all fans of film in general

It seemed like the days of The Terminator, Aliens and Predator were over. Nobody had the vision anymore to craft a hardcore action sci-fi masterpiece that would kick our faces in. We had a few glimmers of hope here and there, but in 1999 it exploded right under us in the form of The Matrix, a brilliant experience that brought us into a world we had never seen.

I'll keep the plot overview simple, because to ruin the movie's big surprises would be a shame, although I'm sure you already know the gist of it. A haggard and frustrated computer programmer named Thomas Anderson, also known by his online alias Neo, is awakened by a band of para-military freedom fighters and their fatherly commander, Morpheus. What is he awakened to? Reality, a horrifying reality that he can barely comprehend, but one that he must quickly learn to live with.

The sprawling plot is an expertly-forged epic of mythic proportions, and it is directed and edited in a haunting way that perfectly shows off the cold deadness of Neo's new reality. The Wachowski brothers have tapped into the primal emotions that made the Star Wars saga such a success: Man, using his cunning mind and heroic brawn, can rise up and rebel against evil and retake his freedom.

The kung-fu battles and gunfight sequences are without a doubt the finest action scenes ever put onto film, and their mind-bending, over-the-top coolness propels The Matrix far beyond anything that has ever come before it; seeing Neo freeze time and watching Trinity spin weightlessly through the air must simply be seen to be believed.

All the acting here, along with the excellent writing and direction, is flawless as well. Keanu Reeves is fantastic as Neo, and Laurence Fishbourne is, as usual, exceptional as Neo's mentor Morpheus. All of the cast gives great, sometimes career-making, performances as well; Carrie Anne-Moss as Trinity and Hugo Weaving as the villainous Agent Smith especially shine.

Quite possibly the best action movie ever made, The Matrix is the type of film that will inspire and influence the future of the science-fiction genre for years to come.

I give The Matrix a 10 out of 10, and I recommend it to any and all fans of film in general

Unlike a lot of monster and sci-fi movies we see these days, where apologizes are constantly made and everything is politically-correct, Deep Rising is an unapolagetic rollar-coaster which only asks us to suspend our higher thinking for an hour and a half. Intelligent by no means, Stephen Sommers' movie however definately succeeds in it's intention, which is to be a straight fun adventure.

Like the rest of the movie, we've seen the plot a dozen times before in different or similar forms. A square-jawed man of the sea and his wise-cracking sidekick give a group of mercenaries a ride in their PT boat to an undisclosed location somewhere out over the murky ocean. Little does the boatman know that the soldiers-for-hire are planning to knock off a massive luxury cruise liner with an assortment of assault rifles and deadly torpedo warheads. When they reach the ship though, they find it derelict, and encounter a nightmarish tentacle beast.

This movie is stupid as hell, but it knows it, and just wants to take us along on its stupid ride. As mentioned before, the movie makes no apologizes. We don't get any little kids who know more than the adults running around and saving the day; instead we get piles of horrid, blood-covered skeletons and disgustingly neat scenes of half-dead victims being regurgitated by our monster villain. Speaking of the monster, its a fairly decent CGI creation, which is surprising considering how little effort can be put into putting CG creatures onto the screen in movies with anything less of a budget than Jurassic Park or The Phantom Menace.

The flick is plenty fun, but where it truly lacks is the character development area. In Deep Rising, and most movies like it, a fair amount of the characters are regulated to quick two or three word descriptions which dictate everything that they do. There's "The Womanizer", "The Coward", "The Guy Who's Scared", etc. And man, if a guys got an Austrailian or English accent..forget about it, that's his whole character right there. The two most interesting characters are Treat Williams, a third rate Bruce Willis-Mel Gibson, who nevertheless puts a likeable effort into the main hero, and the mind-numbingly beautiful Famke Jannkson as a thief the crew finds alive aboard the cruise liner.

Deep Rising is a movie that knows what it wants to do, and does it well, adding some originality and excitement to a genre overflowing with badly-executed ideas and ameatuerish directing.

I give Deep Rising a 6 out of 10, and I'd reccomend it to any fan of grade-B horror movies or anyone who enjoyed the 1999 remake of The Mummy.

Starship Troopers is a deceptive and subtle film, and due to this it is extremely misunderstood. Helmed by Paul Verhoeven, the Dutch director responsible for such other balls-to-the-wall action sci-fi classics as Robocop and Total Recall, Starship Troopers is both an intelligent parody of American fears and a take no prisoners, blood and guts war movie.

At first, it's easy to see how much in this movie has been changed from it's source material, the book by acclaimed science-fiction author Robert A. Heinlien. It seems to share only a handful of things with the mentioned novel: the title, the names of our hero and several other characters, and the main story arch of Earth going to war with a race of vicious, bug-like alien beasts. But if you look closer, you'll see that the movie is more successful in accomplishing the message of Heinlien's book than the book itself.

The movie is set in the future, with no given time or date, and we see a society that is much more conditioned and under control than the world of today. Like most sci-fi Earths of the future, our planet is governed by a single body, a Terran Federation, and everyone on the world falls under their hand. Only military veterans are allowed to become citizens of the Federation, and only these veteran citizens are allowed to vote. Jail is no longer much of a consideration in this future; corporal punishment is the law. Don't worry about paying a 200 dollar fine for drunk driving: about ten lashes at the local whipping post will do the trick. All of this is presented to us by Verhoeven in ingenius propaganda shorts which intercut periodically throughout the movie, detailing every aspect of the world in an indirect and strangely effective manner.

Our main story involves a young man named Johnny Rico, his girlfriend Carmen Ibanez, and his buddy Carl Jenkins. After graduated from high school, the three go into the service; Johnny joins the Mobile Infantry, a Marine-like troop of battle-hardened soldiers, Carmen signs up to become a pilot in the Galactic Navy, and Carl goes into Military Intelligence. All three of these characters are good-looking young kids, strapping and confidant, more like Beverly Hills 90210 cast members than rifle-toting grunts. But as we follow Rico through MI Boot Camp, and ride along with what he experiences, we see that these bleached-teeth young 'uns transform from naive, to scared, to blood-thirsty harbringers of destruction.

And destruction comes in the form of an attack by a race of hideous insect beings hailing from the far-away world of Klendathu. Now Verhoeven has his chance to send our young friends, hungry for death, into the cold night of unblinking combat. The special effects in these battle sequences are nothing short of amazing, with fantastic CG renderings of looming Federation starships, vicious bug drones, and gigantic beasts which launch nuclear fire from their antennae. These scenes are gory, spectacular, and above all: wicked cool.

Starship Troopers is a film which is more complex than meets the eye. The aw-shucks hopefullness of youth, representing mankind in all its glory, taking on and crushing their Godless opposition can't help but call to mind a time when America had such enemies to turn to as Communism and Facism, and the ability to say, "Our boys will take care of you." That idealistic era is a far cry from the United States of today. Our boys aren't fighting, because we have no bugs.

I give this film a 9 out of 10, and recommend it to anyone with a love for great sci-fi and intelligent action films.

Highly original directing, awesome camera-work and use of tricks of the trade, and high-octane acting from all involved combine to form this modern-day masterpiece. Three Kings follows the quest of four American soldiers during the days following 1991's Gulf War. Sergeant Major Archie Gates [George Clooney], who's about to retire, and Chief Elgin [Ice Cube], a devout Catholic. Then there's Sergeant Troy Barlow [Mark Whalberg], your average All-American, and Private Conrad Vig [Spike Jonze], Barlow's admiring pal. The four, after "unearthing" a map pointing out the way to bunkers where Saddam Hussien is storing gold bullion stolen from Kuwait, set off to make themselves a lifetime fortune, with the Beach Boys blasting on the radio. But they get more then they bargained for...excellent directing, dialouge, high-quality and solid acting. A modern-day masterpiece filled with blistering action and satire...a must-see.

Yeeesh...a rating of 4!? What's with *that*? This is one of the most hilariously terrible action sci-fi movies ever made, my friends and brothers. Lets talk about effects. Yes..the blood is actually *smoke powder* which seems to leak from the villains once they're shot. Terrible explosions and pyrotechnics, including inexcusably horrible gunfire effects. The acting is terrible, and will haunt your nightmares. You have been forewarned, comrades. Be wary!