Reviews

i'll admit right out that the hulk was never quite a favorite comic book of mine. i tended to find the hulk annoying. my opinion changed when the TV series came around, and they managed to create a compelling tale out of this idea. while the effects were very primitive (with the hulk's green often wearing off of his body as he moved around), i could buy the show.

when the movie came around, i largely banked on it being an ang lee production thinking that he could make it really really good. boy was i wrong.

to begin with, the script simply doesn't work. i don't know whether the goals were too ambitious or what, but the result was endless exposition about something i ultimately didn't care about. the whole subplot about bruce's mother being murdered by his father did nothing for me. the hulk itself honestly made me laugh out loud when i first saw it. i just couldn't take it seriously or suspend my disbelief.

and nick nolte...oh my god...he was terrible.

i actually walked out of the theater on this one but later decided to check out the ending out of curiosity, thinking maybe there was something i'd missed or that i was being unfair. i wasn't. the ending is as laughable as the rest of the movie.

i guess the moral of the story is, don't try to make hamlet out of a comic book, and don't assume that just because spider man and the x-men translated well to the screen that every comic book hero is going to work as a movie. the hulk proved to us pretty tellingly that this is not the case.

let's hope they have the good sense not to try to make a movie out of thor. that would be even worse.

I find it almost touching how Star Trek fans try desperately to like this film in spite of its unbelievable number of flaws.

To begin with, none of the familiar characters are really in character so to speak. Scotty is depicted as a bumbling tinkerer instead of the competent engineer he was in the original series. Uhura...Gods, I can't even think about what they did to her character. All of her dialog was painful to listen to. McCoy seemed like a neurotic stepfather to Kirk instead of his trusted friend. Spock...well, let's just say that Leonard Nimoy was terribly wasted. He was given bad dialog ("I do not believe you have grasped the gravity of your situation Captain." Gravity, get it? Get it?) and made almost into a buffoon. Kirk...oh man, don't get me started. William Shatner is a hammy actor to begin with, so to allow him to direct really is to invite disaster which is what we got.

The plot is beyond ridiculous. Giving Spock a brother is a pretty desperate story line and unnecessarily soap operaish. But hey, let's go with it. The search for God. Again, a weak plot basis. You don't think so? OK, let's go with that too. So assuming that the two aforementioned plot elements are sound, what's wrong with the script? Well, for one thing, it recycles way too much. The Enterprise, for example, is yet again, not working properly. Are we to assume that Starfleet would send a grossly malfunctioning ship with a skeleton crew into a potentially dangerous situation just because they want James Kirk to handle the situation? If that's the case, then why not put him on a better ship as an adviser? Adding to that...the crew is grossly incompetent. Scotty has the ship in pieces (and apparently is cloddish enough to bump his head knocking himself into unconsciousness WHILE there are hostiles on board!), no one seem to notice the Klingon ship decloaking at a crucial moment (despite the fact that the sensors are clearly showing the ship in weapons range) and the crew all seem way too familiar with each other. In other words, there is no sense of discipline. If this is the flagship of Starfleet, then it's a wonder that the Klingons hadn't already overthrown the Federation.

As to the personal struggles with pain, it was crap. Lawrence Luckenbill is a competent actor, but even he couldn't save this turkey. In short no one could. Of all the people involved, I imagine Leonard Nimoy is the most embarrassed by it. I hope he is, anyway.

Thank god the original cast didn't bow out on this cloddish opus.

aside from the fact that the writers tried to ham handedly bring the story into the 21st century with allusions to the internet, the gulf war, et al. (which seem stuck in there more than anything else) this simply wasn't scary. in fact, it wasn't even creepy. the original movie, while flawed, at least was creepy. in this one, the character of straker is turned from an elegant older gentleman who generates an aura of menace into a crazy wild haired old man that just as well may wear a sign around his neck saying "haha, i'm a bad guy!" there is no chemistry between ben mears and sue norton. the marston house doesn't seem to project the image of a "sounding board for evil" that king described in the novel.

rutger hauer was somewhat effective as barlow, but was largely a disappointment because he was underutilized. while barlow may have not had a lot of appearances in the book, the ones that he did have were memorable.

finally, the special effects were just far too cliché'd. all the business of vampires climbing walls and ceilings...what is that supposed to be? scary it isn't.

i long for someone to take a steven king story and be genuinely creepy with it. all of these horror genre directors are so "in your face" with the supernatural and with their effects that they seem to forget that the most terrifying things are the things that you can't see or see dimly for most of the time, and when they are seen full face, they must project the appropriate menace in order to answer the buildup.

thus, another bad vampire movie bites the dust. trust me, you're better off with buffy the vampire slayer. the writing is certainly better!

Most people know that this film was originally the brain child of Stanley Kubrick whose directorial style is worlds apart from Steven Spielburg.

This material really required a full fledged film director. The problem is that Spielburg doesn't direct films. He directs spectacles that are filled with gimmicks designed to evoke specific responses from the audience. This film tries desperately not to follow suit, but Spielburg clubbed into a sentimental happy ending in the last 20 minutes thus totally invalidating the over all story. His total lack of subtlety is also quite appalling. If the audience wasn't sure whether or not to feel a certain way, the narration was there to helpfully tell us exactly how we were meant to feel: Sad, angry, laughing, warm and fuzzy and seized with the urge to hug a little child...etc.

Spielburg doesn't trust his audience. That is why he seems to find it necessary to force them to accept his contrived happy endings which are so unbelievably sugary one feels the need to go get an insulin shot after seeing the film.

The fact that people actually think this ringmaster of pyrotechnical sentimentality is a brilliant film maker frankly bothers me because it shows yet again how Hollywood marketing has affected the expectations of people.

This wouldn't bother me SO much were it not for the fact that had this film been handled by Kubrick, it would have been a brilliant work of art instead of a passable film that should have ended twenty minutes before it's idiotic ending. I found the ending frankly insulting to my aesthetic sense.

For those who decry the grammar of the title, if you've been watching X-Files, you KNOW where they get their name.

I personally love this show. I find it absurdly funny and a welcome change from the current humorless season of the X-Files which is begging for a decent Viking funeral. The early episodes are going to be rough just as the early episodes of the X-Files were rough in my opinion. However, that doesn't mask the enjoyment I get from some of the more absurd things they've come up with so far such as a chimpanzee that communicates with the voice of Edward Woodward the blind football team, and the supposed alien abductee who feels inadequate when compared to his father-in-law the dwarf wrestler. As for Jimmy, he's great! He'so much the true believer, sometimes you have to wonder if he really is that dumb or if he's actually got a whole agenda of his own. No, he probably is that dumb...maybe even dumber.

I'm hoping this show sticks around for a good long time. I suspect as time goes on, they will work out the kinks.

The interesting thing about this film to me is not so much the conspiracy theories that it cites, but rather its portrayal of Jim Garrison. I myself am not a proponent of any of the conspiracy theories cited in this film. I tend to regard them in the same way I regard urban legends or sightings of Elvis. However, the films account of Jim Garrison's activities in relation to the trial of Clay Shaw is definitely of interest to me.

Having read Garrison's book, `On the Trail of the Assassins' and various other accounts of the JFK assassination, I find that the movie only serves to support my belief that Garrison's case against Clay Shaw was utter fiction. There really wasn't anything even remotely resembling hard evidence that Clay Shaw had anything to do with the JFK assassination. There are indications, however, that Garrison probably singled Shaw out because of his homosexuality. It's pretty well documented that Garrison was homophobic and this is even referenced in the movie when his wife cites it as the reason Garrison is going after Clay Shaw. In fact, in his interview with Shaw in the movie, he puts Shaw on the spot for hiring a male prostitute before he even mentions Lee Harvey Oswald. (The character played by Kevin Bacon in this film is fictional by the way. There was no Willie O'Keefe) What bearing does Shaw's homosexuality have on the Kennedy assassination? You tell me! Another thing you notice in the movie is that Garrison's witnesses all seem to be from the bottom layer of society. In real life, his only real witness (if you can call him that) was a man called Perry Russo whose deposition was initially taken under the influence of sodium pentathol. Until then, Russo never even mentioned knowing Clay Shaw, and the name he gave, Clay Bertrand, was used by Garrison as evidence of Shaw's guilt. (There was never any hard evidence that Shaw ever used that alias, although Garrison insists that it was given by Shaw when he was arrested) The point is, the more you know factually about Garrison, the more the film shows him not to be some kind of Shakespearian hero, but rather a corrupt and paranoid man with extreme charisma. It's also worth noting that if Clay Shaw hadn't died of cancer (not mysteriously as the film suggests) he'd have probably won the civil lawsuit he'd brought against Garrison for wrongful persecution. It's also worth mentioning that Shaw was financially broken by the legal expenses involved in defending himself against Garrison's lawsuit. The film makes no mention of this, of course as it would not serve Stone's ends to make a documentary about how Garrison effectively ruined Shaw's life.

The frustrating thing about this movie is that since it is cinematically well crafted, and the performances are compelling, it is also grossly misleading. Aside from making Garrison into a hero, it makes Oswald look like some kind of complex character straight out of the Manchurian Candidate. (A movie I'm sure Stone loved...I certainly did.) Oswald was a bitter little man who wanted to be a big man. I saw no indications of this in the film. Costner's portrayal of Garrison was actually more accurate than I expected as it gives indications of all the aspects of his character I've cited above.

I'd say if you don't know a lot about the Kennedy assassination, read up on it before you subject yourself to this movie. In spite of it's implausible theories, it can convince the uninformed of some very inaccurate things.

Animal Farm is the one Orwell book I've not read yet. However, I liked this film very much. I have no doubt that a staunch fan of Orwell (whom I'm not sure I'd ever want to meet) would disapprove of the liberties taken with the story, but I don't rightly care. It was an excellent film, and the voice characterizations were right on the money. Patrick Stewart's portrayal of Napoleon/Stalin was chilling, and he captured the essence of Stalin like few people could in my opinion. (Fascinating since I could never see him playing Stalin as a character....but then Robert Duvall did so who knows?). The expressions of the animals were amazingly well done too. It puts me in hope that the same technology could be used if a film is ever made of "The Master and Margarita".

Good as this was though, it cannot compare with Michael Radfords film of "1984".