Reviews

The previews I saw for this movie led me to believe that it was a supernatural thriller like The Sixth Sense or Stigmata. I never got the sci-fi tech angle from the trailers. That ended up being a very pleasant surprise.

I thoroughly enjoyed this movie. Tony Scott's direction reminded me at times of his earlier films like The Hunger or Revenge. The guy's a painter. The look of the film is beautiful.

I read a couple of reviews on here saying that the acting was sub-par. Absolute nonsense. Sure, if you're looking for over-the-top hamminess, this film will let you down. Denzel Washington is understated as an ATF agent based in New Orleans. He's got an easygoing way about him and speaks economically. There's a bit of Sam Elliot in this character. Val Kilmer plays an FBI agent with a big secret. He's believably tight-lipped. Both these performances were fantastic. Too many idiots in this world believe that a person has to be bombastic to truly be *acting*. That's why Tom Cruise has a career.

Yes, I'll admit that the time-loop logic is flawed but it's not enough to kill the film. It's not a huge glaring flaw that left me yelling "Bullsh*t!" like the one at the end of Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes remake.

And along the same lines, I thought that the way the technology was explained was perfect. It was explained exactly the way those characters would have explained it. We're used to films explaining made-up technology to us, the audience, through lots of convoluted on screen exposition. This film chose a more realistic path. "It doesn't matter how it works. Sit down and help us prevent a crime." I like that. If I wanted a lecture on time-travel theory, I wouldn't be going to see a movie.

Relax and enjoy a fun movie!

Yes, I read the book. And I enjoyed the film as much if not more. The movie dispenses with lots of unnecessary rambling and gets right to the action. Some have questioned why Langdon has become more of a skeptic of Teabing's theories, but it truly helps to balance out Dan Brown's story where everyone agrees on the same radical beliefs. It's not as much of a turn-off-your-brain action movie as National Treasure, but it's more satisfying. The art direction is superb and I had no problems with the acting. My only real problems came from the pedestrian dialogue. I know they were trying to stay true to a dumbly written book, but they could have spiced it up a bit and avoided a lot of the cheesiness.

If more critics were concerned with objectively looking at movies rather than selling a pithy blurb, this movie would be getting better ratings.

I can't say much that hasn't already been said brilliantly. Obviously, many of you love the bad movies the way I do.

For those of you reading this who have not seen the film, I'll tell you exactly why you should watch it: It's Brandon Lee in a feature-length Mentos commercial. I kid you not. The look and feel of this movie simply scream "The Freshmaker." You know you want to see it now.

And just to correct one bit of info someone else posted, the one and only song used in this movie (over and over and over) is indeed by David Knopfler. David was not, however, in Dire Straits. That was his brother Mark. This movie was only able to afford David. Sorta like getting Ted Mellencamp. Not good.

I mean really! What are you people thinking? What did you watch that I didn't? 3.9 STARS?!?!? What I saw was a movie with no clear definition of characters, no actual exposition of the plot, horrible editing, inappropriate sight gags that should have been on the "blooper reel", and some godawful acting. How can you possibly assign a positive integer to this film?

I'm not even going to waste time writing a full review here. This film is all style, no substance. It's full of plotholes and general stupidity. The characters follow totally illogical paths to arrive at completely pointless "answers" and along the way there's a whole lot of creepy visual non-sequiturs. In a film like The Sixth Sense, a revelation is made which follows back to another revelation and so forth until the whole story is made stunningly clear. In The Ring, things are built up as revelations, but they explain nothing. There are no answers. There aren't even open-ended questions as an intentional choice. There are just a lot of creepy things thrown in here for no good reason. I'm not prone to exaggeration and hyperbole, so when I say that this is one of the worst films I've ever seen, especially relative to the hype it received, I mean it's a special kind of bad. Don't buy it. Don't rent it. Don't let friends persuade you to watch it. They're stupid and they lie.

I'm going to make this very brief. Others have done a fine job of summarizing K-PAX, no need to bother with more of that. All I will tell you is that if you're like me and you avoided this film because you saw the trailer and thought "Ugh. Another 'Pay It Forward' shlockfest?", don't worry! Universal did a horrible job of selling this film. I know exactly what the weasels in marketing were thinking. "If we sell it as sci-fi, women won't go. If we sell it as semi-inspirational drama, only women will go." And then Sept. 11 happened. America needed warm-fuzzies. Universal cranked out a trailer that made this look like L. Ron Hubbard meets Deepak Chopra and you couldn't have paid me to see it. Well, I just watched it tonight. Yes, it's inspirational, but more importantly, it's thought-provoking. It gives no easy answers and is not nearly as heavy-handed as I expected. The only people I don't recommend this film for are the very ones who need to see it most. Rent it and then read over the reviews on here. Enjoy!