Reviews

I think it was high time that we had a really good movie that showed a realistic depiction of what happened during the satanic panic in the 80s and 90s. The movie does a fantastic job depicting how psychologists, policemen, priests, and other people can inadvertently (or, perhaps, somewhat intentionally) implant false memories in people. It also does a good job explaining how regressions don't surface real "buried memories", but actually create new false memories. And finally, it did a great job depicting how one false accusation can trigger others, eventually pulling more and more people into its web.

(Spoiler about movie's ending follows.)

Having said all of that, I found the movie's ending to be cheap and disappointing. The girl who originated the first accusation is basically painted as the bad guy. Hawke's character, a policeman, explicitly calls her out as being evil. In reality, the children making the accusations in the real-world satanic panic were obviously not evil. They were victims themselves, just not victims of satanic ritual abuse. Instead, they were victims of a system that implanted false memories in their minds.

In fact, the way Regression plays out, this would have been a valid ending to the movie, since there were people who were egging her on, giving her new ideas for people to accuse, and stories to concoct.

Instead, Amenábar decided to end the movie with the unrealistic idea that she somehow planned this whole thing as a revenge plot against her own family, and to get out of her family's influence. It's unrealistic, it's insulting to the audience, and it's pulling down what would otherwise have been a nigh perfect movie.

What's more, this kind of victim blaming is actually dangerous. In the real world, it's very rare that women intentionally falsely accuse others of having raped them. At the same time, women's accusations of rape are often dismissed or not taken seriously. Ending Regression in this way, by effectively blaming the women for the whole thing, plays into this narrative of not believing women's accusations.

In addition to all of these points, it would also have been a much more interesting, realistic movie if the conclusion had been that, no, there was no really bad guy. Everybody did their best, and things went to hell anyway, because people are not perfect, and the best intentions can't always guarantee a good outcome. But I guess Hollywood needs a bad guy, and that's what we got.

In conclusion: fantastic movie, but a disappointing, unrealistic, sadly dangerous and kind of insulting ending.

Dark Shadows was mostly entertaining, apart from some slow parts, and an overdone, unmotivated ending.

But what struck me most about the movie was how twisted its "ethics" were. Basically, the movie's "hero" is a horrible person, and, by the way, a serial murderer. The "villain", on the other hand, is a woman who started out as a maid, was abused by her employer (the aforementioned "hero"), and founded a company that eventually put her former employer's company out of business. The "happy ending" of the movie is the "hero" murdering her, presumably in retribution for her crime of being "uppity".

Along the way, there's also a female doctor, whom he murders because she tries to become a vampire. Yet he has no particular issues turning his girlfriend into a vampire later on, to prevent her from dying.

All of this made it very hard for me to identify with the movie's ostensible hero. It's sometimes fun to root for the bad guy, but when it becomes obvious that the bad guy is actually the good guy, while the good guy is a horrible person, the whole thing can quickly turn into a very frustrating experience.

So, Dr. Jones really is back. Is it all we hoped for? Of course not, that would have been impossible. But it's still an entirely enjoyable movie.

I love the style of the movie. Somehow, the creators of Indy 4 were able to replicate the distinct picture quality of the early Indy movies. Spielberg even managed to go back to his old filming style with camera angles similar to the early movies, and there are tons of shots where it's obvious that the actors are acting in front of projections. In fact, apart from a few CG shots, the movie might as well have been made 20 years ago and been buried until now. Quite amazing.

The typical continuity errors are back (yeah, I think they're entirely intentional). There are lots of cases where people and stuff move around between cuts. I was almost waiting for a mic to peek into the picture, but sadly, I never saw one.

The movie is a huge load of fun. All the typical Indy lines and moves are back, pacing is okay, the story keeps going and never gets boring.

All in all, this is way better than we could reasonably have expected or asked for. Highly recommended. Go watch.

Having said all that… This is no "Raiders of the Lost Ark." It's not even a "Last Crusade." It's probably about on par with "Temple of Doom." There are huge issues with this movie.

MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD The first disappointment was the very fact that the movie starts out in the storage warehouse where the Ark was put at the end of that movie. I always thought this was an incredibly strong ending for that movie, leaving the eventual fate of the Ark open for interpretation. While it plays no actual role in the current movie, we *do* learn that nothing actually happened to the Ark. Seeing it again kind of takes away the magic of not knowing. But that is quite acceptable.

The next disappointment was the absolute lack of Nazis. I'm sorry, but the communists simply aren't a good replacement for Nazis. Nazis make for great movie villains because they are utterly evil, ruthlessly efficient, and entirely dark. No matter how outlandish the goal they're trying to achieve, now matter how absurd the means they're using to reach these goals, you can always believe that they really would have done something like this. The commies? Not so much. They may be evil, but they also ended up being quite incompetent. They're okay, I guess, they just can't hold a candle to the likes of a Toht ("Fräulein Ravenwood, let me show you what I am used to…"). But okay, so we have commies. Not as cool as Nazis, but we can live with that, too. However… The third disappointment: The whole back story is entirely absurd! Yet another Steven Spielberg movie involving awkward aliens. You should think that he had his fill of aliens - E.T., Close Encounters, AI, War of the Worlds - so why did he have to put them into "our" movie, too? I much preferred the story of the "other" Indy 4, "The Fate of Atlantis." What starts out as a nice little Dr-Jones-Adventure-Romp quickly jumps the shark after about half of the movie and goes into a sort of metaphysical alien search complete with living alien heads, benevolent inter-dimensional super beings and an utterly transcendental ending.

Which is the final disappointment: The ending. Why (and how?) does the person yearning for knowledge get punished? Why do the cowards who run away win? And, uh… what the heck actually happens? So yeah. Definitely a ton of fun, and great to have Dr. Jones back. But "Raiders of the Lost Ark" or even "Last Crusade" this ain't. It's a great movie to watch, but thinking about what exactly you just saw kind of leaves a bad taste in your mouth. I think I'm going to play through "Fate of Atlantis" again to wash that bad taste of "alien" out of my mouth.

There's no way I can talk about Postal without first saying a word or two about Uwe Boll. Many people may not know who Boll is, but most hardcore gamers do (and probably most regular visitors to IMDb). Because he's the guy who has made a career out of making crappy movie adaptations for second-league game franchises. And I don't mean "crappy" as in "Silent Hill" crappy. I mean "crappy" as in "Ed Wood" crappy. His first movie adaption was "House of the Dead", based on the Sega game franchise by the same name. Now admittedly, this was your typical zombie slasher, and as far as zombie slashers go, it certainly wasn't the worst you could possibly watch. Still, it's a pretty bad movie.

But Boll actually managed to go downhill from there. His next piece was a movie based on the Alone in the Dark franchise. The movie sported an utterly incoherent plot, unbelievably bad acting, and abysmal special effects. Next up was Blood Rayne. The only good thing that can be said about that movie is that it features some nudity. He actually made a follow-up to that movie. In Blood Rayne 2, even the nudity was gone.

Now these are all bad movies. They all have bad scripts, bad camera work, bad special effects, bad cutting, bad pacing, bad acting, bad everything. The only objectively positive thing that can be said about these movies is that Boll generally manages to cast a surprising number of A-list actors.

There is, however, one other thing about these movies: They are entertaining. Now admittedly, they are entertaining in the same way that a train crash in slow motion is entertaining, but they are entertaining nevertheless. Even though the movies are objectively and obviously bad on every level, I still love to watch them.

Which brings me to Boll's two most recent oeuvres. Something strange is happening: Boll seems to be learning.

In the Name of the King is actually a reasonably good movie. As most Boll movies, it features an unbelievable cast. Jason Statham, Leelee Sobieski, John Rhys-Davies, Ron Perlman, Claire Forlani, Kristanna Loken, Mathew Lillard, Ray Liotta, Burt Reynolds… I don't know just who Boll bribed to get these people to act in his movie, but it obviously worked.

But in addition to having great actors, the movie actually has a reasonably coherent script. There are still issues with pacing and camera work, but it's possible to follow the movie's plot and not constantly wonder just what drugs the writer was on when he managed to scribble it down. And there are some truly good special effects in this movie.

So In the Name of the King is an acceptable movie by Hollywood standards.

But not Postal. Postal is actually a genuinely great movie.

This is a movie the likes of which you have not seen in a long time. Remember The Naked Gun? Imagine a movie like The Naked Gun. Except it isn't afraid of making politically incorrect political statement. And except way, way more crass. This movie isn't pulling any punches.

The basic story is that a regular job-less loser gets mixed up in a plot by a bunch of Jihadists who are trying to release bird flu by giving children plush dolls which look like brown penises and have a TV show voiced by Verne Troyer. And it gets weirder from there. Basically, Boll pulls all registers, even appearing in the movie as himself, claiming that his flicks are financed by Nazi gold.

And it works.

Bolls inept directing skills (which aren't quite as inept anymore) actually don't hurt the movie. It's a comedy anyways, some strange cuts here and there just add to the movie.

--mild spoilers-- There's also a ton of gamer fan service. For example, Boll gets shot in the crotch, and the movie makes fun of "experts" who think games are to blame for violence. Vince Desi makes a guest appearance, too. --end of mild spoilers--

In the end, it's pretty much a no-holds-barred, politically incorrect two hour long episode of Southpark, except with real people.

Definitely worth watching.