Reviews

The good, the bad and the ugly. In Jeepers Creepers Part II, the ugly is a monster that must eat every 23 years. And people are his favorite dish. It seems nothing can kill it. And the worst thing of all is that it can fly. Jeepers Creepers II starts just a few days after the end of the first one, when the monster is about to end his killing rampage. And his last victims will be a couple of kids from a basketball team traveling in a school bus.

The bad? Some scenes in this movie are just plain idiotic. Couple of kids trapped inside a bus, running from one place to the other just to avoid being eaten. Some of them were so dumb that they made it easy for the demon to get them. Strangely, for unexplained reasons, the school bus' radio couldn't reach the police or anyone else's. Did the demon jam all radio frequencies? And then there's the psychic girl... This movie wants us to believe everyone learned about the monster's feeding habits through a girl's dumb dream. They could have found another way to let everyone know what they were dealing with.

The good? This movie has many scary scenes, and some that are just funny. The action is there. The special effects are there, but it isn't saturated with them. It is dumb yet original to have some people trapped inside a bus while a flying demon stalks them. Inside that vehicle, arguments and agreements between the kids serve to give them a personality and increase the plot's tension. Jeepers Creepers II may be foolish sometimes, but it never gets boring.

To make the story better, they are helped by a dad and his son. They lost someone because of this monster and will do everything to avenge him. How will they do it? Well their idea was quite inventive.

Jeepers Creepers is further enhanced by a happy ending that tells us there may be a third installment in the Jeepers Creepers series. When it comes to horror, this is a must see.

What's wrong with Prince of Darkness? Well, it is a film that is struggling to find a link between Christianity and science (physics, to be more specific), and it fails to do so. Most of the things they are saying sound crazy at best.

However Prince of Darkness is still one scary movie. Horror master John Carpenter (the same genius behind The Thing and In the Mouth of Madness) is behind this masterpiece about a mysterious form of energy that appears in a Los Angeles temple and soon starts to gain control of all the people, most of them scientists, studying it. A cameo by Alice Cooper as a homeless schizophrenic who, accompanied by people like him, is making sure no one inside the temple leaves may indicate this is what he meant with the song "Welcome to my nightmare." Prince of Darkness is nightmarish. And its ending will make you wonder what the protagonist is about to do.

Watch this film alone, at night, with the lights off.

One of the reasons people like to bash this movie is because Michael Myers isn't here to kill people (while no one seems to notice), get shot and stay on his feet and finally escape at the end. Halloween III may not be the average flick that you can call good horror, but you can be sure that there are a lot of movies out there that are worse than this one. Besides, this film has a few scary moments to gloss over it; I am talking about the androids that were like stepping stones for the creation of the redoubtable Agent Smith.

People who watched Halloween III for the first time probably expected it to be a follow up to Halloween II. The bitter disappointment is accompanied by an illogical plot with a chain of holes and mistakes that can many anyone wonder if the screenwriter never bothered to read his own script.

Halloween III has an entrepreneur who owns a company that fabricates masks. So far, so good. Then we learn that some of his employees are robots. Did he bring them from the future? The movie is toying with our credibility now. But it is definitely not finished. Because our entrepreneur wants to sacrifice children in the name of Samhain. In order to do so, he puts chips on every Halloween mask his company makes. These chips will kill all children as soon as they watch a commercial (with a very annoying song, I must add) on Halloween night. Obviously the bad guy doesn't know that children like to see how things work and may open the chip (like that woman inside a motel did) and get themselves killed. They may also remove the chip and lose it. Parents may see it and call someone to find out what it is. These are things he never thought about. As bad as this is, he also believes that all children, on Halloween night, will immediately forget their candies and stick to the television when the dreadful commercial comes. Obviously he has been hanging around androids way too long.

Don't read any more if you haven't watched the movie yet.

A few scenes in the movie are clear examples of bad filmmaking. Take for example the scene where a couple and their son get inside a room for an experiment. The kid starts watching the commercial on television, and suddenly, for no reason, he puts on a mask with the chip on the back. When the chip kills him, cockroaches and snakes come out of his head. -apparently all the company's masks come with cockroaches and snakes that get big when a head explodes. Credibility has been murdered along with the kid. Adding insult to credibility's injuries, the kid's parents see that their son is dead and don't seem to react. Then, when there are cockroaches and snakes all over the room, his mother faints. Father runs to the door. Where are the tears? The screams? Are they robots too?

Then there is the ending. How does the protagonist destroy the company? He just runs the deadly commercial and then throws some deadly chips around, so they will blow up. While the commercial runs, the evil and dumb entrepreneur just looks at the hero and applauds. Doesn't he know how to turn off a VCR and stop the commercial? The ending can make you picture the director screaming "Let's wrap up this thing and go home, everyone."

One of the good things about this film is the androids. If you watch Halloween 2, you may realize Michael Myers doesn't mind getting shot and being set on fire. He survives. He also survived getting his head chopped off in Halloween H2O. Hey, maybe the sole purpose of Halloween III was telling us that our beloved antihero is actually a renegade android that just kills people and repairs himself. That would explain how he re-attached his head when Jamie Lee Curtis cut it off.

My advice for Halloween III, don't take it seriously. Think of the scary moments. And think about how good it could be if it felt in the hands of the Mystery Science Fiction 3000 guys.

Lost in Translation starts really well. A movie about an actor that once enjoyed a lot of popularity, but now he is aging and must settle for a job in Japan advertising a new wine brand. A movie about a woman whose marriage is shallow. Her husband doesn't really care about her. Then during the movie she meets the aging actor and their lives suddenly become exciting.

Lost in Translation is about how people are the same no matter what language or culture they have. It is a movie about two people whose lives are empty, but they find in each other what they need despite their differences.

This film, although it may seem great, could have been put in a short story. The plot can be summed up in less than fifty lines. You could study any tourist that goes to any country and make a movie about the experiences of that person, and it would be as good as this. After the first twenty minutes, Lost in Translation becomes a boring episode of anyone's life during a trip to any country. Even the funny moments aren't special at all. The things we see in Lost in Translation can happen to anyone during a week.

One thing this movie has that makes other people like it is the fact that they identify themselves with the characters having fun. However if your idea of having fun is not, and I repeat myself "is not", going to bars, playing video games, singing karaoke songs and having an affair, Lost in Translation is as entertaining as fixing a broken chair.

The first problem with Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World is the name. This is a movie about a Captain who is obsessed with a mystery ship that defeated him and his crew in a short-lived combat that took place in the Pacific ocean. This is pretty much Moby Dick with a French ship replacing a whale. So far, not so bad. However the name of the film makes you believe this is a movie about the life of a Master and Commander, not just his obsession with mending a lost battle.

The name of the movie is ambiguous. As you watch the story roll, you realize that the plot suffers from the same problem. We know he is after a corsaire ship. We know the forces of Napoleon are threatening England, and he sees this French ship as the enemy of his country. But his obsession isn't believable. He never becomes fully dictatorial. He doesn't run his ship like a democracy either. And during his quest to defeat this ship, a lot incidents take place that have nothing to do with it. A clear example is that scene where a man shoots the doctor by accident. Can you get rid of that scene without affecting the plot? Yes. The incident could have been removed from the film, and it wouldn't have suffered at all.

A captain who wants to defeat a ghost ship full of Frenchmen. However the target of his obsession doesn't have a personality at all. What we see is two members of the captain's crew explaining to him why the ship is superior. Other than that, the enemy is totally devoid of personality. The Captain might as well be chasing a cardboard ship.

Master and Commander has its downs. However this film is saved by the fact that it is a dose of fresh air. It is not about criminals that are utterly bad shooting people for no reason other than showing the viewer that they need to have the word bad on their foreheads. It is not about a ruthless killer that loves death because his life wasn't as good as yours and mine. The enemy are corsaires. Unfortunately this new antagonist wasn't developed properly. With the good acting and the good choreography, what a great film this could have been.

Master and Commander is a good film. But it needed to focus more on the plot and less on the things that happened to every single person around Captain Russell Crowe.

Stephen King may be the man behind Shawshank Redemption, Dolores Clairborne and the Green Mile. But he was also the man behind Thinner, Children of the Corn and one of the worst episodes of the X-Files ever. Clive Barker (you could say he is King's English counterpart) was the writer behind Hellraiser, Lord of Illusions. But he was also the man behind the novel Coldheart Canyon. Both writers have talent. But they have pitfalls too; we are all human.

And Quicksilver Highway isn't exactly their best.

Quicksilver Highway seems like a movie made out of two mediocre stories that came out of the minds of two great writers. Perhaps they were among their worst stories. If that was the case, they shouldn't have made it to television. The first one, the Clattering Teeth, isn't so bad. But it is unoriginal and dull. So dull you just want it to end. But it goes on and on. Eventually it becomes tiresome; since this movie was made for TV, you may find yourself going to the kitchen to look inside the refrigerator before it ends and the other one begins. The second story, the one written by Clive Barker, seems more like the work of Stephen King. Here we have a hand that gets life of its own and turn against its owner. Soon other hands join a revolution. The story could have consumed thirty minutes of your life. But it didn't stop when it should have. Just like the first story, it went on and on. Maybe you can forget about the hands walking around on their own and return to the kitchen. This film may help you gain weight but gets short when it comes to entertaining us.

Quicksilver Highway only has two stories. Not five or three like Creepshow I and II. After you watch this film, you feel like you have escaped out of a neverending nightmare. It is obvious that they wanted to stretch the stories long enough to make a film and not another episode of the Twilight Zone.

Perhaps it is a good idea to avoid this one at all cost.

Bourne Identity is definitely Robert Ludlum's best novel. But can it translate well into a good film? After watching films like Sphere (based on the Michael Crighton novel by the same name) and Queen of the Damned (based on the Anne Rice novel) and after enduring all the films loosely based on Dean R. Koontz's great novels, I can say I wasn't expecting much out of Bourne Identity.

Fortunately Bourne Identity proves that not all films taken out of grandiose novels turn out to be mediocre entertainment. In the novel, the terrorist Carlos is the enemy. Needless to say that had to be changed-Carlos is in jail now. If you read the book, you will realize that a lot of chapters were simply skipped. There was no option. If the movie had had every chapter from the novel put into the film, it would have lasted more than four hours-just like the miniseries by the same name that came out in 1988. Despite all the changes made to the movie, despite all the deviations from the original story (some of them rather risky), Bourne Identity is a great film.

Matt Damon is definitely a great actor. And his good acting doesn't fail to disappoint here. And Franka Potente makes a great sidekick. She is far from being the typical Hollywood good actress. And this role was definitely for her. In one movie scene, you will see Matt Damon cutting her hair. Then she dyes it. This woman colored her hair blond once. Then she shaved it all. Now she is letting a man with amnesia give her a haircut. She just can't stop doing things to her hair. Not that it bothers me. Nothing about this actress is annoying. She was impressing in Run Lola Run, and she continues to be. Same thing can be said about Matt Damon. He was great in The Talented Mr. Ripley, and he was perfect for the role of Jason Bourne, an agent suffering from amnesia who must find out who and what he is, and the more he learns about himself, the more in danger he gets.

Bourne Identity is far from being the typical spy film. Here there are no amazing, hard to believe gadgets that seem to come out of James Bond films. Here there are no amazing explosions that seem more like advertisement for good pyrotechnic companies than parts of any film. It is just a good suspense story equipped with believable action.

This is a movie every fan of the genre should see.

Have you ever watched a film that you thought wasn't good, and then, after a few hours, when you began thinking about it, you realized you were wrong? To me, this is that film. 21 Grams seemed to have been made to be the perfect drama. Good actors and a gripping story make it worth watching. An interesting plot, where a tragedy makes the lives of different people intermix, where tragedy seems to destroy some people's lives yet save others, makes 21 grams one of those films you may think about for a long time.

21 Grams can make 21 philosophers sit around a table and argue about the plot. Is life good? Is life a nightmare? Is dead just another stage in our lives? This movie can stir up a lot of questions. And it

can be interpreted in many ways.

But some of the questions that popped into my head as I watched 21 Grams weren't of a philosophical nature. Was it necessary to shift from past to present, and from present to past so often? I saw this in Identity, and now I see it here. Movie directors and scriptwriters need to understand that this technique is not always good. In Memento, it was great due to the nature of his mind disease. Not here. People go to the movies to be entertained. Not to put together a jigsaw puzzle that actually makes the actors' characters seem like cutout cardboards. Another question that crossed my mind was this: is vomiting a necessity now? Is Hollywood full of vomit-producers who go from studio to studio selling vomit?

From a scale of 1 to 10, 21 Grams is an 8.0. But without the scenes jumble, it could have been a 9. Let's hope there's a DVD version with that problem fixed.

Produced by Dark Castle Entertainment (the same people who brought to you House on Haunted Hill and 13 Ghosts) and directed by Steve Beck (13 Ghosts), Ghost Ship is one of those horror films that will disappoint you if you have high expectations and will satisfy you if you are one of those people who expect little out of horror movies.

The film begins in 1962 with a scary, ridiculous and laughable scene where a group of rich Europeans inside a pleasure cruise get cut in half by what appears to be a freak accident. We get transported to the year 2002, where a team of sailors whose job is to salvage ships that are lost at sea (I didn't even know that profession existed) receive an invitation from a mysterious man: there is a lost ship out there, and they will get a great deal of money if they manage to find it and save it.

The rest of the film seems like a cross between Titanic and Event Horizon. They find an empty ship that seems haunted. Strange occurrences tell the ship-salvagers that they are in danger.

Ghost ship seems to be a recycled, or better yet "reloaded", movie about ships that are possessed by mysterious forces no one can comprehend. Just like Event Horizon (which clearly told us that science is bad, bad, bad), Ghost Ship also has a message: greed is bad. And as long as there's greed, bad things will happen.

Good for a horror film. Not so bad compared to hundreds of other horror films. And quite frankly, it is better than Event Horizon or Sphere. But don't expect much from a film based on concepts that have been explored hundreds of times.

Aliens III, Lethal Weapon III, Matrix Revolutions, Return of the Jedi, Scream III, all these movies have something in common: they are the weakest of a trilogy (keep in mind that Star Wars was once a trilogy).

It seems the people behind these films ran out of the ideas they had for the first two in the series. Scary Movie III, however, seems to be a rare exception. Maybe because the first two Scary Movies weren't that good to begin with.

In Scary Movie III, the Wayans brother seem to have exploited the good things about the first two: lots of people getting punched, hit with bats, cars, etc, people being stupid, stumbling, etc. And of course, making fun of horror and science fiction films. Last but not least, they seem to have realized that some people don't find disgusting scenes funny at all.

This film has a lot of scenes that can make you laugh as long as you like spoof films. The funeral scenes is one of the best I have ever seen. Then there is the alien footage scenes. And the unforgettable scenes mocking the Matrix series.

Many films of this type have been terrible. Mafia, for example, made me leave the theater, and I hadn't done that before, no matter how bad the movie was. Not Another Stupid American Movie was beyond stupid and made me wonder if it was time to stop making this type of films. Scary Movie has revitalized them.

Valentine begins when a dumb kid becomes the victim of a prank. And throughout the film, someone may wonder if this film was actually written by a dumb kid. A few murder scenes that seem stolen from a Friday the 13th movie that never made it to the screens made this movie just a littleeeeeeee entertaining sometimes. Besides that, Valentine is a tumult of cliches, wasted ideas and errors.

The movie has a Detective that seems to be about to become an important character in the story. But he never does that. He does nothing to find the killer. He just disappears from the story faster than Sandra Bullock did in the Vanishing (okay, maybe he had the right idea). But he doesn't leave before doing something a little perverted (like putting his hand on a woman's lap) to make us believe he might be the killer. But it didn't work. It wasn't convincing enough. Denise Richards proves once again that she can't act. And the outcome of this story is as messy as the rest of the film. People are disappearing, and those that aren't dead yet are worried enough to call the police, but then they attend a party, as if nothing was happening. And when they are alone at that party (yes, they are alone even if that can be dangerous), they start to die. Should we jump to the conclusion that everyone in this film is so obsessed with having fun that they are willing to set their problems aside, put their lives at stake?

The killer has a motive. But his motive is related to something that happened when he was a teenager. Why didn't the writers of this film make him murder someone who hit him when he was in kindergarten? The creators of this atrocity wanted a movie about a serial killer who goes on a rampage during Valentine Day because Halloween, New Year, Friday the 13th are already taken, and the producers of those films made a lot of money, so the producers of this film expected that another holiday killer would be another money-maker as well. Perhaps we need someone with a stupid reason to murder people on Independence Day, and I am not talking about marauding aliens with windows 95 here.

My advice? Avoid this film.

Many people disagree with me, but I believe the first X-Men had many shallow characters.

This movie, however, introduced characters like Nightcrawler, Ice-Man, that, even if they were mutants, you could see as people and not just actors getting paid for being part of a film.

X2 was full of new ideas and great action sequences, like the two warplanes being chased by tornadoes. The action is great in this film, but it gives you time to breath (if you don't understand watch the Peacemaker, and you will see action that never stops to the point where you just get bored).

The bottom line, X2 is a great film.

What was going through the minds of the people who canceled this show? Probably a conspiracy perpetrated by people who are plotting to destroy television by allowing bad shows like Off Centre to stay and getting rid of good ones like ¨Dead Last¨, ¨Maybe it´s me¨ and ¨Night Visions¨.

The Lone Gunmen was funny, the characters were great, the action was good. After watching the first season, I became convinced that the show would last for as long as the X-files has. Sadly it is gone.

When Andromeda came out, I thought it would be just another disappointing sci-fi show like Crusader and Space Above and Beyond. But after watching the first four episodes, it became obvious that Andromeda is here to stay.

The show has great special effects, acting, a lot of action and drama. It is good to know that the third season of Andromeda is about to begin.