Change Your Image
twilightseer
Reviews
I Know Who Killed Me (2007)
Not as atrocious as it's made out to be, but bad for sure...
The only reason I wanted to watch this film was that it got no less than 9 nominations for the 2007 Razzies, including 3 for Lindsay Lohan alone. I figured that only a really, really bad film could achieve this and, since I love laughing at lame movies as much as the next guy, I immediately tracked down this movie to watch it and have a good time laughing at how bad it would be.
Now, the first thing I want to say about "I Know Who Killed Me" is this: if this movie is, as many viewers say, "the worst film they've ever seen", clearly, these people have not seen much. On the top of my head, I can think of a dozen movies that are absolutely atrocious and way, way worse than this Lindsay Lohan vehicle. While I love reading "extreme" movie reviews posted by angry reviewers, you have to be honest at some point. "I Know Who Killed Me" is not "unwatchable" in any way.
With that said, I'm not going to defend this movie and say it's great. It is not. It is bad.
The problem is that there are two types of bad movies. You have "the so-bad they're funny" bad movies (which are entertaining), and you have the "bad, just bad" films (which are unfunny and boring). Unfortunately, "I Know Who Killed Me" falls into the latter category.
Sometimes, you know right from the first scenes that a movie is going to suck. That was the case for "Basic Instinct 2" (which incidentally won the Razzie of Worst Movie in 2006). Right from the opening, with Sharon Stone driving the sports car straight into the river, you knew that what would follow would be dreadful. The same thing happens here. In the first ten minutes, I was struck by how all the actors were so awkward and unable to portray anything correctly. The actors playing the cops took the cake: I've hardly ever seen cop characters played so badly and unconvincingly.
And then, the plot starts, so to speak. At first, the premise seems just as interesting as any: pampered girl gets kidnapped and tortured by a serial killer, then mysteriously reappears but claims she's a different person. Sounds intriguing enough, the sort of stuff David Lynch could use. But everything falls apart in no time. The whole thing turns out to be yet another story based on paranormal tripe, and a very boring one at that. The writer has no idea about what makes a good story, character or situation; his script is ridden with clichés, plot holes, and cop-outs. Random example: as if the whole "stigmatic twins" stuff was not far-fetched enough, near the end of the movie, Dakota suddenly has an epiphany (convenient, isn't it?) that gives her all the information she needs to find the killer. Sure, why bother with rational stuff, just make the character have an epiphany and the job is done! Everything in that script is just botched and lazy.
The whole thing is certainly not helped by the weak cast and the clumsy direction of Chris Sivertson whose great idea here is to add unsubtle references to the colour blue all the time while giving a "clipesque" look to the extended torture scenes.
Now, about Lindsay Lohan. She's the only person who shows some involvement. She's no Scarlet Johansson, or Kirsten Dunst, but at least she tries. The problem is that her acting skills are too limited to handle the good girl/bad girl thing on screen. And the material she's given, whether it's the script or direction, is way too poor for her to salvage anything. The stripping scenes (in which she doesn't even remove her bra, let's applaud the writer again for realism) are totally ugly and un-sexy. The sex scene where she goes at it with her sister's boyfriend seems to come right from the next American Pie movie. Everything is like this but it's not entirely Lohan's fault. She looks competent in some scenes. And she's the only reason why you'd want to sit through this bore until the killer's identity is revealed and the movie ends (at last).
That pretty much sums it up. "I Know Who Killed Me" is clearly straight-to-DVD material that only got released in theatres because Lohan was in it. But again, despite being awfully boring and flawed, it's not the sheer atrocity some claim it is. You'll see much much worse than this (Jaws The Revenge, anyone?). "I Know Who Killed me" is just a boring, not-bad-enough-to-be-funny film among thousands of its siblings.
Snakes on a Plane (2006)
Boy, where to start...
According to what I read in the 'Trvia' section for this movie, Samuel Jackson accepted the part only because of the title. Well, maybe reading the script would have been a good idea too.
"Snakes On A Plane" is actually a wreck on all levels. It manages to be simultaneously 1) absolutely silly 2) boring 3) not the slightest bit scary and 4) moralizing.
1) Silliness. The basic concept is already far-fetched (how about hiring a good ol' hit-man to do the job?) but the result is filled to the brim with things that are so stupid that the film just can't work. Random examples: some characters die instantly with one bite, others will survive. If all the snakes are supposed to be deadly, why does this happen? At some point, the co-pilot sees snakes crawling out of his dashboard. But he keeps piloting the plane like nothing happens. Of course, it's the kind of thing that a plane pilot will see every day. Later, said co-pilot is left for dead but then comes back miraculously, before dying for good. Can anyone explain that? No, and the screenwriters can't either. Want some more? How about the mini-flamethrower that the hostess (played by Julianna Margulies of E.R. fame; did she need money that bad?) carries with herself? Are we supposed to believe a civilian could have such a weapon? But the icing on the cake is undoubtedly the fact that one of the passengers claims to be able to pilot the plane; we find out that in fact, his only experience is playing flight simulation video games (by the way, the Playstation and Xbox consoles get mentioned by name by Jackson; hello, product placement). Of course, the guy pilots the plane flawlessly because piloting a Boeing, as everybody knows, is just as easy as playing a flight simulator. I could carry on ad nauseam but I'll leave it at that.
2) & 3) The movie is absolutely not scary, and therefore totally boring. The snakes are so obviously CGI'ed that you just can't be scared at all. Also, the special effects during the snakes' big attack are so visible that you just can't feel involved. You're always aware that it's a movie and a bad one at that. As a result, the movie is boring and you just can't wait until the snakes actually finish the job, or the plane crashes (I was hoping for either to happen; unfortunately, it doesn't).
4) Finally, I would like to point out something that has really bothered me. All "disaster movies" have a typology of easily identifiable characters, who often boil down to a cliché. It's always interesting to see which characters will survive and which ones won't because it says a lot about the mentality of the writers. "Snakes On A Plane" manages to gather almost all the clichés and politically correct views that you can pack in a Hollywoodian blockbuster: the bad guy is obviously an Asian while the uber-cool cop and the fatso who saves the day are black; the first people who get killed are a couple of lovers who go at it in the plane's toilet while smoking a joint (get it, people? Sex and drugs are just bad for you!); the businessman who doesn't like kids and dogs is killed by the biggest snake of all (get it, people? You have to like kids and dogs!); the two kids who travel without their parents of course survive, although one is bitten by a snake (you didn't think of them would die, did you?); the slim woman who has a baby survives too (you didn't think etc...) while the ugly obese kidless one dies etc. The most revealing thing however is a line in which Samuel Jackson says something along the lines of "You can either die or trust the government". This sounds like a perfect summary of what the US leaders could tell the US people.
I'll stop there. "Snakes On A Plane" plain sucks. Quite funnily, Jackson perfectly sums up the viewer's feelings when he says "Enough is enough! I have had it with these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking plane!". I couldn't agree more.
Basic Instinct 2 (2006)
As awful as it gets
I thought that BI2 could not be as bad as most reviews said it was. Well, it turns out that I was wrong.
BI2 is indeed a serious piece of crap without any redeeming factor. The movie is disastrous and dismal on all levels. BI was a sexy thriller and in it, Sharon Stone was the epitome of the deadly seductress. 14 years after, Catherine Tramell has become a poor shade of her former self: she's as sexy as a lead pipe and about as dangerous as my mother's best friend. David Morrissey is ghastly beyond belief. Charlotte Rampling seems to be lost in that mess (why in the world did she accept such an uninteresting part? Taxes to pay, perhaps?). David Thewlis is the only one who actually seems to do his actor's job but it's a complete waste.
The material is so terrible that not even Jack Nicholson could do anything with it. The script is the biggest load of codswallop I've seen in recent years. Did the writers actually think the ending was a good one? My take is that they thought that the audience is mostly made of imbecils who'll swallow anything hook, line and sinker provided it's labelled as a plot twist. To me, that kind of ending is just insulting to the audience.
And don't expect anything raunchy in this movie; it simply isn't there. The so-called hot scenes are: Sharon Stone getting fingered offscreen while driving a car at 110MPH (she climaxes before the car falls down in the Thames), Sharon Stone going at it with a guy in some club and finally Sharon Stone displaying her breasts while getting in a jacuzzi. Believe me, it's way hotter when you write it than when you see it. It's not even softcore in my book. Lame stuff that's all. So don't bother renting this just for saucy stuff, you'll be very disappointed.
There is nothing remotely intense, sexy or interesting in BI2, only the promise that you will waste 110 minutes of your life that you'll never get back. If you want a thriller, watch Hitchcock's "Vertigo". If you want nudity and sex, rent any good porn film, there are plenty out there and unlike BI2, they actually deliver the goods.
Steer clear of that junk.
Masters of Horror: Sick Girl (2006)
Pretty lame
"Sick Girl" was the second episode of "Masters Of Horror" that I saw (after the average "Pick Me Up") and, after watching it, I'm not sure I'm going to bother with the other episodes if they're that bad. Honestly, this was pretty lame.
Let's put things straight: "Sick Girl" is not a horror movie (it isn't the slightest bit frightening). It's just a Z-grade erotic movie argument stretched over an hour. The writer and director just came up with a really poor excuse to film two girls making out in just about every scene. What's the point of shooting this as part of a series called "Masters Of Horror"? I mean, the director should have been honest and made an erotic or porn film, period. Or made a movie dealing with the relationship between these two girls (this could have been much more interesting). No need to cover it up with that stupid "evil bug" nonsense. It's almost insulting.
It's a shame for Bettis, who appears like an interesting actress and does an okay job. But really, she's been exploited here. The other girl, Erin Brown (who, I just discovered, is apparently a star of low-budget erotic films under the moniker Misty Mundae) is not bad either. But again, except for watching these two make out extendedly (if that's what you're looking for), there is no reason why anyone would want to inflict this drivel on themselves.
Basic (2003)
Plot twist sickness
Sadly, "Basic" is another example of a potentially good movie ruined by bad screen writing or rather, pretentious screen writing. Indeed, screenwriter James Vanderbilt decided to play "oh-so-clever" with the audience and throw as many plot twists and reversals as humanly possible in 90 minutes. The problem is that he doesn't know the difference between surprising an audience and frustrating an audience, and after a correct introduction, the story becomes totally overloaded and nonsensical; the climax being the utterly stupid, "You didn't see that one coming, huh?" ending.
I for one am tired of watching all those supposedly suspenseful movies that use purely artificial tricks such as "It was all a dream." or "The character was lying all the way." or "Remember what you saw during the last 45 minutes? Well, forget it because it never happened!". It has to be said once and for all: screenwriters, you cannot write a script using those tricks any more. They've been used to death, they're cliché, they're just lame cop-outs that show that you cannot write a good story.
The movie is only watchable because it is correctly directed by John McTiernan and because the cast is OK (except for Travolta's lousy performance from start to finish). With that said, there's certainly no need to bother with "Basic". Watch something more rewarding (that shouldn't be too hard to find). If you insist on watching it, I strongly suggest using the "Randomise chapters" feature of your DVD player. Who knows, you might actually get a coherent story.
Rating: 3.5 stars out of 10
Poirot: Five Little Pigs (2003)
Well-done but the plot ruins it all
I have to start by saying that I haven't read the book this movie was adapted from so I have no idea whether it's faithful adaptation or not. That being said, Five Little Pigs is well directed and well acted, with Suchet topping a rather solid and convincing cast (except for the actress playing Elsa, not that she's bad but she's nothing of a stellar beauty and it's hard to understand why one would be head over heels for her), and it proves quite gripping. That is, until the plot reaches its resolution.
Agatha Christie has been considered for long as the queen of clever plots; rather than clever, I would say "incredibly far-fetched" and this movie shows it. In the first part, Poirot visits every person that was present on the day of the murder and hears their version of the events. Then, he gathers them together and explains what truly happened. The problem here is that his investigation is entirely based on the testimonies of suspects, who, in addition, have reasons to lie to him. No physical evidence, no proved facts and yet Poirot manages to nail the murderer in a breeze. What we see at work here is not a detective but a psychic who happens to know everything, even what people did or thought at a particular time. This is unbelievable. The way he nails the real murderer (since of course, there is the inevitable "perfect culprit" who didn't do it) is so convoluted, hypothetical and arbitrary that the whole movie comes to nothing. One of the pleasures of whodunnits is trying to solve the mystery at the same time as the detective, with the same clues. Since all clues are virtual here and since the detective seems to work from visions, the viewer has no chance so what's the point?
The cast and the dark moody atmosphere still make Five Little Pigs very watchable but if you value plot credibility more than anything else, there's every chance that you'll be very disappointed.
Lost in Translation (2003)
I really wanted to like it...
but I didn't. I rented this on DVD because I had really liked "Virgin Suicides", Sofia Coppola's first film, which was intense and eerie. Also, the pitch of Lost In Translation (LIT) seemed interesting and I thought that Coppola could make a great film out of it provided she showed the same talent as in her first film. Sadly, this is not the case.
It's easy to see what Coppola tried to achieve with LIT: a tale about loneliness, incomprehension and impossible love, devoid of any real plot or action but instead, relying solely on the personalities of the two main characters and the feelings arising between them. This is an incredibly ambitious project, the problem is: if you want to make a movie that is so character-driven, you have to create characters that viewers can identify with and feel empathy for. This is the biggest failure in LIT: the lack of such characters.
Let's look at the protagonists. Bob Harris, the actor played by Bill Murray, is totally jaded and apathetic. Why? Simply because he's been married for 25 years and is in Japan for a few days to shoot a commercial that still earns him 2 million dollars. Really tough indeed. As to Charlotte, she feels blue because her husband works hard to get his 15 minutes of fame and doesn't have much time to devote to her. Big deal. However talented Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson are, they can't convince me that these people really have serious reasons to complain and that they're really the loneliest people in the world.
So from then on, I waited and waited again, convinced that something remotely interesting or moving would eventually happen between them. And the wait was very boring since, as I wrote before, there is no real plot. The film is a dilated succession of empty moments, conversations and encounters that seem to have no end. Sometimes, inexplicably, Sofia Coppola throws in totally random things that seem totally out of place, such as the (mildly funny) visual gags with Murray, the karaoke/strip joint/TV show scenes (which are, in addition, unpleasant examples of stereotyping of Japanese people, a constant that sure doesn't help the film) or additional characters like the dizzy action movie star played by Anna Faris (if this is supposed to be a snide attack on the industry of blockbusters, it fails miserably because Faris's character is at least alive and proves much more memorable than any other in the film).
In the end, after what seems to be an eternity (and a boring one at that), Bob and Charlotte say goodbye to each other. This was the only time where I felt a little emotion, maybe because the idea of a heart-wrenching separation is universal. But even this nice moment is marred by a now well-known dramatic trick (SPOILER: before leaving for good, Bob whispers something in Charlotte's ear and the viewer will never know what that was). If they had just kissed, looked a moment at each other, smiled and then separated, then the ending would have been good. As it is, it's just artificial and shrug-inducing.
Overall, Lost In Translation was a massive, cruel letdown. It was all the more disappointing since a lot of time and talent were wasted into it. In order to not be entirely negative, I'll still mention that the cinematography is beautiful (so is Tokyo, apparently) and that the music is good at times. It's still not enough for me to make for a good movie. To conclude, I really hope that "Virgin Suicides" was not just a fluke and that Sofia Coppola's next film will be much better than this one.
T'aime (2000)
Daft and dangerous (contains spoilers)
The only reason I wanted to watch this movie was that even before its release, it had acquired the reputation of being one of the worst French movies of the last few years. And since I'm fond of "so bad they're good" turkeys, I thought I'd give this one a go.
Surprisingly, it didn't come off as particularly bad at first. The storyline is nothing new but decently introduced: after witnessing his sister getting slapped by her lover during sex, a retarded young man repeats the scene with a girl he's in love with before raping her. He's sent to a lunatic asylum for life while she goes to another asylum to be treated by a supposedly very good therapist.
And this is where the movie plunges into the unknown, so to speak, with the appearance of Patrick Sébastien as the divorced, long-haired biker who happens be the therapist in question. You see, more than just a doctor, the guy is the king of humanists. Solidly equipped with an arsenal of definitive maxims about life and the human condition (the most brilliant of which being "Absolute love is like a scarecrow that attracts birds"), he is deeply convinced that the girl is in fact in love with the guy who raped her. So he takes her to the asylum where Zef (that's the name of the retarded rapist) is and he confronts them daily until something happens. And what happens? Well, absolute love of course ! Miraculously, the girl relinquishes all wrath towards her rapist, she shares sandwiches with him and even teaches him to read before eventually marrying him!
Sounds ridiculous? It is. And made even more painful by the fact that Sébastien hammers as many silly and gooey clichés as he can: the mentally ill would be better off without medication, love is the cure to everything, male nurses in asylums are sadistic idiots, humanists are alone against the entire cruel world and so on... all of this interspersed with more terrible dialogue, especially during the scenes with the grotesque character played by Annie Girardot (a chiromancer who murdered her own baby!) who, among other things, claims "It's not us [the mentally ill] who have a problem, it's the whole planet". It reaches a point where it's too pathetic for the viewer to even want to laugh and Sébastien believes so firmly in all the crap he inflicts on us that it's almost worthy of admiration.
However, the worst of all is the rather obscene message that this movie conveys. Basically, it tells us that the best therapy for a raped woman is to fall in love and eventually have consensual sex with her rapist, with guidance from an open-minded therapist. I'm happy to learn after all this time that rape is in fact just foreplay to genuine love. So, ultimately, I got my excruciatingly bad movie. But not the one I expected. Not a laughable one. Just a pretentious stinker repellent on all levels.
All Around the Town (2002)
A mess indeed
I may be one of the very few people in the world who have never read a Mary Higgins Clark book and I have no idea if this is a faithful adaptation, but if it is, it sure won't be an incentive for me to run to the bookshop. This movie is just an average thriller whose cruel lack of originality is hardly masked by purely artificial "complexity". Actually, it really looks like the writers took almost all of the cliches of the genre and threw them into the mix : intertwined stories of kidnapping and murder, suspect with "multiple personalities", creepy couple of bad guys, understanding sister, wonderful shrink, cunning private investigator, angry boyfriend, jealous woman : all these elements loosely combined together cannot be considered as a plot, sorry. The acting, doesn't do much to help this lousy story : while the actress who plays Laurie does a decent job (despite the fact that she yells a lot), Nastassja Kinski delivers a remarkably poor performance : apparently, she doesn't give a damn and keeps her eyes half-closed during the entire movie. I guess she just needed the money. To conclude, I would only recommend this to die-hard Clark fans who will probably dig it. I for one will wait a long time until I get one of her novels or watch another adaptation of them.
The Blair Witch Project (1999)
A complete piece of trash (includes spoilers)
WARNING. THIS REVIEW INCLUDES SPOILERS !!!
This week-end, my girlfriend and I saw "The Blair Witch" project on French TV. I was very impatient to see it after all the hype and rave reviews it got when it was released. Dammit, it sucked. It really did. All you have in this movie is three idiots lost in the woods, screaming at each other. And that's it ! Only this. Nothing happens at all. Most of the time, the screen is just pitch-dark, or so obscure that you can't see anything. The plot, which relies on so-called realism is plain stupid. For instance, how come these guys didn't hire a guide to help them find their way in the forest ? And why the hell does one of the characters just throw away the map ? How come their camera's battery never runs out ? And when a person is about to die, does he/she really keep filming himself/herself without doing anything else ? The list could go on and on. Not only is this movie stupid and ridiculous but above all, it is boring, terribly boring. I mean it : don't expect this to frighten you. In my opinion, absolutely nothing can redeem this thing. And I can't possibly understand why some people acclaimed it and made it such a huge success. The original concept may have been good but the actual result is a complete failure. One of the worst films I've ever seen.
My vote : 1/10
The Faculty (1998)
it's good
I saw "The Faculty" yesterday and enjoyed it. In fact, I was quite surprised at the beginning as I expected some sort violent Scream-like movie, which this film is not at all. But while "The Faculty" is absolutely not frightening, it's still very entertaining. Sure, the whole plot is not very original and each of the main character corresponds to a classic teen movie stereotype. Yet, there's still enough action and rhythm on the screen to make you want to watch the movie until the end. Overall, I would say that "The Faculty" is a cool movie, with a good cast.
My vote: 7 out of 10
Blade (1998)
Entertaining but forgettable
When I started watching this movie, I didn't expect a lot from it. Finally, I was (more or less) pleasantly surprised. I think that this movie's best quality is its "honesty" if I may say so: it doesn't pretend to be a masterpiece or anything else than what it actually is, i.e. entertaining. The plot is quite weak but the movie is fast, the dark atmosphere pretty well rendered, the fight scenes well done. In a nutshell, you don't get bored (even if the movie is slightly too long). On the other hand, Blade is not a film that I could watch over and over again: even if it is entertaining, there is nothing exceptional or unforgettable about it. In conclusion, a rather good action flick, nothing less... but nothing more.
An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn (1997)
Aaaaaaargh!
What an awful flick ! I caught it yesterday as it was aired on French TV and I couldn't believe it. I had read several IMDb reviews and I expected the movie to be ... I'll say "not very good". But this ! Let's face it: not only is this whole thing stupid (though it was probably meant to be very clever), ridiculous and humiliating for the actors (all of them, no exception) but it's also boring to an inconceivable extent. In fact, I'm not sure that these words actually reflect how lame this thing is. Kudos to all the people who managed to see it from the beginning to the end without running away (I left after 45 minutes). This is undoubtedly one of the worst things I've ever seen. Avoid it like the plague !