Reviews

I won't get into the story here because it's abundantly covered pretty much everywhere else. So anyway, on to my opinion...

Making a serious/silly genre film that firmly sits on the edge isn't easy. More so when the whole film revolves around this concept and thumbs its nose at superhero conventions (in a friendly way though).

Kick-Ass manages this rare balance act and more, with a few cult scenes, a brilliant cast, fine styling, good cinematography, good music, a script that works, and it even has its share of quotable one liners (assuming you're a homicidal superhero).

All in all it's a brilliant film that works for most segments of the public. It's at once a superhero film and a comedy, an adventure film and an action flick... the only people that might be put off will be a segment of the US public because of the abundant swearing, a lot of it uttered by a kid girl (which just makes it more fun for the rest of us).

Remember that if you need them, the mayor has a special signal... http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1250777/trivia?tab=qt&item=qt1120995

I don't generally give extreme notes to films since there's no "perfect" film. Yet I gave a 10 to two of Fosse's films.

Cabaret is at once a drama, a comedy, some kind of echo from the sidelines of history, where, knowing what you do, you watch the terror bloom, and of course a beautiful musical (only through the acts of the Cabaret).

Bob Fosse actually is a very good filmmaker. I often wonder what would have happened if he had picked that line of work. Here he picked an excellent cast to portray the end of an era, a group which decided to hold on until the end, bent on ignoring the world around them and party on. As we all do in our own way. Of course this will end badly, for life usually does.

Back when I was stuck in officer's school, this was one of the only watchable films shown in the city where I was stationed. For some reason it played for 5 or 6 months and I must have seen it about 10 times in the same theatre. Thanks Bob !

A number of spectators may have chosen to see Ultraviolet because of Kurt Wimmer's previous Equilibrium which while it wasn't quite there yet was still good and promising. Wimmer claimed that he did in Ultraviolet (with a much larger budget) what he had sketched out in Equilibrium.

I was one of those spectators. While it didn't have a completely ground shattering story line (but then what movie does), Equilibrium did have a number of interesting cinematographic ideas. Unfortunately it was released roughly at the same time as the first Matrix movie (also sort of in the "acrobatic gunfight" genre) and was pretty much lost in the noise. However those of us who saw it remembered to keep an eye for that director who showed some promise.

Then came Ultraviolet. Where Kurt Wimmer finally got to do what he wanted to. But somewhere, something went wrong.

Because I am at heart an optimist, I still kind of believe that most of the damage was done in the cutting room. Film editing is a bit of a black art and it's amazing how much you can destroy (or mend for that matter) on the editing bench. In this case, the editing software must have been very buggy, the editor very drunk, or someone must have come at night and purposefully destroyed the movie. At any rate the structure of the movie is just terrible. It doesn't flow, the story (what little of it there is) doesn't work, a lot of the scenes feel broken. Even some of the action scenes don't work properly.

All of this makes the film quite painful to watch, especially because you keep thinking of the lot opportunities. Oh and for some reason a soft filter is applied on every single close shot of Milla Jovovich (who must have shot this at the ripe age of 29 or 30). This was very distracting for me.

In conclusion, and despite the fairly negative comments above, the film is full of interesting little ideas that people who are interested in modern cinematography will enjoy picking out and analyse (hence the 4 I gave). As a movie for the generic public though, it's probably better to do something else at the same time.

But honestly, to get this end product, someone must have sabotaged the film. It just doesn't make sense any other way.

You probably have to know London a bit to fully enjoy the story of Neverwhere (the series or the novel for that matter). The whole story relies on knowing a bit of the city layout, above and below :) And it's understandable that US viewers can be surprised by the low budget BBC production (unless they were familiarized with it through stuff like Dr Who which seems to be popular at the moment). Most European TVs don't get to sell their productions abroad so they won't invest as heavily as the US productions.

I read the novel long before I could get my hands on the DVD (actually way before I was even aware of anything being available in filmed form, much less as a DVD). For some reason the only release seems to be for the US market.

Regarding the Neverwhere series, yes, while the cast is mostly good, some of the actors are so-so. Even with the obviously shoestring budget, the sets and costumes are quite inventive and convincingly used. The directing unfortunately is really poor and it does quite a bit of damage to the effectiveness of the whole.

If you have read and enjoyed the novel, you will find the series to be something imperfect yes but also something that you can watch with fondness. Possibly a proper adaptation by a proper director with a decent budget would be nice. But it's unlikely it will ever happen. Isn't it better to enjoy what's available even if it could theoretically be better ?

Based on a solid (if somewhat classic) story of personal redemption with a very good cast, Man on Fire had everything to succeed had the camera operator and editor not been high during the whole making of the movie. The constant motion, the odd cuts and abrupt transitions, while they may work well in a 2 1/2 minute music video, do not translate all that well to a two+ hour movie. I found it really irritating after about 20 minutes, and I have shot my share of experimental stuff. I even considered giving up on the movie at one point, even though I quite liked the movie, but it really was too much to take.

I guess the younger crowd raised on hysterical MTV style images will probably be more tolerant. However the rest of us with an attention span of more that three seconds may find it painful.

I really would have rated the movie 8 or 9 if it hadn't been for that issue. A shame really... Especially since there were other interesting ideas, notably the work on colour.

This movie appears to be quite popular for a lot of people in the US but apparently it had too many obscure cultural references to warrant a theatric distribution in most of Europe. I heard high praise for it every now and then even though I'd never seen it released anywhere.

It's a bit of a shame as it is indeed a bit of a gem like the ZAZ movies (Airport! and the like) were in their time. Quite far from the usual cretinous teen high-school movies, it creates a new genre all by itself.

Now I finally saw it for the first time at 38 so it can be fun even without the nostalgia bit kicking in that has been mentioned by a lot of others. The sheer creativity and crazyness of the moviemaker is in itself reason enough to see the movie. Several times even.

As a native French speaker though, it is quite irritating to (as usual) have the French character portrayed by an actress who obviously doesn't speak a work of the language and who invents a kind of generic "foreign" (to a US audience at least) accent. It is a minor annoyance though and doesn't spoil the film. The poor girl does her best, plays the part well despite that big handicap and I suppose the budget didn't allow for a language coach anyway :) Anyway a great little movie that will come as a refreshing surprise to all those who want a change from the preformatted internationally distributed Hollywood stuff.

XXX is rightfully compared to the James Bond series. It does indeed resemble the recent incarnations of the British secret agent movies except that its makers seem to have been intent on overdoing everything. This includes more bad acting, more ridiculous sets, more ugly props, more unbelievable explosions. Oh and whoever thought of a "solar powered submarine" ought to be shot (although the "submarine" ends up navigating on the surface all the time so I expect it's not that big an issue after all). The only strange exception was that the female lead didn't have a breast implant for some strange reason. Maybe all the budget was spent buying gasoline for the explosions.

Some lines of the dialog are relatively funny in a 2nd degree kind of way buy most fall flat, thanks to Vin Diesel's remarkably flat acting (and to the lines themselves not being all that great to begin with).

So what you'll get is people driving cars amidst fuel explosions while firing guns (poorly, as usual) and delivering poor one liners. It is entirely possible to spend two hours that way on a rainy night and even remotely enjoy it but if you want a good action movie or one with clever dialogs or even decent acting, this definitely isn't it.