Reviews

Sure, the director from Ong Bak the Thai Warrior is terrific. Sure there are some truly amazing fight sequences. Sure it's nicely shot. Sure there are some amazing locations and full-sized explosions. Besides all of this, this movie was barely watch-able. Why? Because NOTHING HAPPENS FOR FORTY MINUTES!!!! After this amazing opening scene we're subjected to an endless array of set-ups that were unbearable. First the star is brooding, then his sister's brooding (and VERY hot), then they're traveling to the country, then they're meeting the villagers. All of these scenes had a modicum of charm but strung back-to-back they just made for endless set up that rose the dramatic level about zero percent. I strongly recommend this film to karate movie fans, but only if your remote is working properly. You NEED it for this flick.

I just bought this film for my dad, a big history and war film buff. I thought it'd right up his alley with some historical facts and right up my alley with some exciting air battles. Boy was I wrong! The story was a complete drag! This clumsy, plodding script unfolds slowly and predictably. James Franco and Martin Henderson were horrible. Really it took all my strength to not shuttle forward to get to the battle scenes. The battle scenes were horrible as well! According to this film there are never more than 12 people on the frontlines of WWI and almost nobody bleeds. Granted I didn't see the film in the theater but the air battles were totally phony looking. My 72 year old dad with his bad eyes turned to me and said "this looks like a video game". There was no point where this film was able to grab my interest. Sure the design on the planes were cool but that had nothing to do with this film. So are you gonna see this film for the hokey unexciting battle scenes or the plodding script? There were two pros for the film: Lucienne the love interest is beautiful and it was nice to get a glimpse of what happened with the Lafayette Escadrille.

This is The Great Stan Lee we're talking about so I hesitate to say anything bad. Nonetheless Mr. Lee has decided to do trash for cash. First of all the music throughout the whole film is low grade 80's movie synthesizer. This music is so bad and so distracting it makes your eyes roll. It also sets a tone of b-movie cheapness. Honestly I do love cheapo b-films but you have to be able to laugh at it. Lightspeed tries so hard to take itself seriously but has nothing good or fun to offer. The script is horrible, the acting is a joke and the characters are preposterous. Worst of all, ALL the superhero elements are derived from other comic book characters to create an uninteresting amalgam with no unique abilities. Again, I love Stan Lee and comics and b- movies, but this is one to avoid.

The problem with so very many Chinese martial arts films is their tendency to be cheapo junk. Kids of Shaolin, starring Jet Li back when he was a Chinese action film star is not cheap looking at all! Honestly though, nobody sees a martial arts film for the production value. They see it for the martial arts. This film's emphasis isn't so much on people beating the living daylights out of each other. Instead it's the acrobatics that are most on display. Of course, Jet Li as the oldest brother is a brilliant athlete, but he isn't the main attraction by far! The kids in the title are DAZZLING!!! There are a few scenes where the clan of Shaolin boys compete with the clan of Wu-Tang girls, trying to show each other up. These scenes are some of THE MOST IMPRESSIVE acrobatics I've seen anywhere. During these scenes, the background is filled with the beautiful and dramatic steep mountains and winding rivers of China. I really can't say enough about these scenes, which easily make the movie great. Don't get me wrong, it's not a perfect film by a long shot, but these kids are so impressive that they make this film a must-see.

I watched this movie on Monsters HD, which usually show the best part right before the movie starts. There wasn't a darn thing on, so I decided to watch. I really have to say this is a class 'A' clunker! The main actor wasn't that bad, but everybody, I mean EVERYBODY else in the entire cast was absolutely atrocious! Right about the time I had re-named it "unwatchable", there was a gratuitous topless sex scene. The girl was hot, so I watched a little bit more. Then came the murders, and they were pretty cool, but WAY too few to hold a feature-length flick. If only there was a bit more plot and A LOT more monster scenes, even the cheezoid acting would've been tolerable. I gave the movie a three because of the boobs, the kills and the monster.

This was advertised as "Hammerboy" on Voom satellite service. I saw in in HD and it was absolutely beautiful from a film transfer perspective. This was my first Korean anime. It was heavily geared toward children. As a result, it had a bit of trouble holding my attention. Nonetheless, it was nicely drawn and animated. There were some jokes and plot points in there that wouldn't be made by anybody appealing to American parents. That, of course, is a compliment to the filmmakers who were trying to tell a story, not sell a doll to neo- conservatives in the Bible belt. On the whole, I do not recommend this film even though there were some nice things about it.

Look, we all know that the band performances are the star of this film. If you know that going in, you're bound to love it. The weak, re-tread script goes like this: Talented ghetto kid gets a scholarship shot on the big southern-school drumline. He meets a hottie, falls in love, fights with the second in command, everybody makes nice and they make beautiful music together. The lead actor who played the ghetto kid was a good actor, as is Orlando Jones. The love interest is gorgeous. The opponent also does a fine job. None of this matters. The band sequences are totally fun and energizing. You'll be giddy during the final sequences. Who can complain about that?

So here's what appears to be the modern equivalent to "First Blood." It's actually a far more interesting idea, where Tommy Lee Jones' character trains special forces how to survive and kill. He's also an excellent tracker. This is important, because he ends up tracking one of his former trainees who's been killing civilians in the woods. It turns out that the trainee, played by Benicio Del Toro, has lost his mind and thinks everybody is an enemy. Cool idea, no? So what makes this so bad? First of all, I am a HUGE fan of both Tommy Lee Jones and Benicio Del Toro. Mr. Jones has a lot of running around to do. It's really sad watching a rickety old man wearing old man pants and hush puppies run around. It was silly in The Sixth Day, and it's even more silly here. He hobbles like an old man. He moves like an old man. Benecio has never been worse in a movie. He completely phoned in every line of dialogue. No facial expressions, no tone in his voice, no accent, no physicality. Nothing here would ever lead anyone to believe that this man can act. A cryin' shame, because he can act. He just didn't. So here he is phoning it in, and he's fat as well. So in the big battle scenes where editing is the only real actor, you have a fat lazy man battling a rickety hobbling old man. So who wins? The movie studio for getting our money. Believe your friends. This one is unwatchable.

OK, I know this flick isn't gonna win any awards, but the killing spree really did put me on the edge of my seat. Bustah Rhymes is always cool, but I am certain I'd never seen somebody with only one sideburn. Too bad, because the one he was wearing was really cool. And of course he's The Great Bustah Rhymes, so he does more than his fair share of butt-kicking. Jaimie Lee Curtis was somehow really good with what I would describe as a dubious role. There's an internet webcam tie-in they allude to in the previews. It's too bad this wasn't a short film of just that scene, because it was GREAT and the rest of the movie was boring and silly.

Really, that's all I can say. The so-called twist was obvious to me so early on that I just forced myself to sit through the end. I had hoped to no avail that the third act might be fun enough to carry this boring film. Alas not even the always-great Johnny Depp could hold my interest. If you find you've figured it out and it's beginning to drag toward the first hour, trust me, find something more fun to do with your time. This movie was highly rated, so I realize I'm in the minority, but it bored me.

Unless you are an anime JUNKIE, stay away from this one. Three beautifully animated stories. Too bad the stories themselves are boring enough to put you asleep. Like most anime, they all start with promise, drawing you in with beautiful visuals and a story that might just reveal something interesting. Instead, you're left with a bit of annoyance that so much emphasis was placed on the art and so little on creating a worthwile tale.

OK. This film really didn't deserve the "1" that I gave it, but seeing

that it's one of the all time top sellers AND top rated, I just had to

stick my two bits in. This film deserves a solid "5". It looked OK,

but the acting was not great (and I am a fan of the cast). But what

really brought this film down was the hokey contrived script. With

all the people in the world screaming "I knew what was gonna

happen the whole time", here really is a film where there are no

surprises whatsoever. Perhaps it's one of those films that gets

better with repeated viewings, but there is NOTHING that you'll

recall from your first viewing that'll stick with you long enough to

desire a second one. It does have a cool box. Maybe that's why

everybody's snatching up the DVD....

This is 10 wisely spent minutes. It's a cute idea, and Amanda Peet is hilarious! She's really good at slapstick, and takes a fall better than most people. She's also the prettiest pratfaller I've ever seen.

So this is a low-budget movie with not a single famous person attached to it. SO WHAT! It was an interesting story idea and the acting was better than in most "A" films. The lighting was dark and colorful, with lots of dutch angles, very Batman-esque. It worked as a thriller and it worked as a sci-fi film. The special effects worked perfectly even if they weren't expensive. I'm in post-production and am a HUGE snob about these things. The giant-budget effects in Matrix 2 were FAR LESS CONVINCING than these? Why? Because the effects work on the level that they're supposed to. There are two things that are best about this film. The first is the lively, Nine-Inch-Nails like soundtrack. They had some good musicians make close rip-offs such as Marilyn Manson's "Beautiful People" for example. Most "B" films have really hokey music. This one doesn't. Thing two was the editing. There were lots of flashback-type stuff with great disturbing bloody images, etc. I am an editor, and I was highly impressed with the entire post-production on this. If this is on cable, I recommend it!

There was little matrix, little neo, little morpheus, and most importantly, NO CHARACTER PATHOS!!!! Who gives a rat's hiney about a bunch of faceless, nipple- squeezing remnants of humanity? There was neither resolution to the film nor to the war with the machines. Those Wachowski Brothers want to say that they've left it open for the viewers to decide what happened, but the truth is that their script, and their direction was truly lazy and meandering. They decided to rest on the laurels of Matrix 1. Those laurels have been crushed. The Wachowskis have become Hollywood. I wonder what "A" budget piece of trash they'll do next... By the way, wait for cable TV for this one. Not even worth the $4 rental.

I was really looking forward to seeing this film. It was well received, looked beautiful, and was a really interesting idea. Unfortunately, that's it. It was very beautiful, and might be a good family flick. Having no family of my own, I can judge based entirely on the merits of the film. There was enough plot to last about 40 minutes and the script was practically an outline. The action didn't rise, the bad guy (Ben Kingsley) wasn't the least bit threatening, and William Hurt was downright two-dimensional! No passion, no character pathos, no interest. If you're DESPERATE to see something not animated with your kids, maybe this is the way to go, but I do mean DESPERATE.

He lost his edge when he got famous. This is a film that follows the love lives of a series of characters, all of whom are dislikeable and uninteresting. Anyone who can make Rosario Dawson unappealing must SUCK as a director. This was a personal catharsis for Mr. Burns, whose inability to cope romantically has produced for us an unnecessary film. Oh, and Ed Burns is a bad actor as well.

If you've seen Atlantis 1, then you'd know that what made that film truly great was brilliant animation and a good script. This movie was SO sloppily drawn and animated. The story is also dopey. I was so disappointed in this half-baked drivel that I couldn't make it past the first hour, and MAN did I try! The one thing this film had was that it expanded the "mole" character, making him both more sympathetic and three dimensional. Take it from me, judge this junk from the cover on the video box. The cover is poorly drawn Disney schlock, clearly grabbing for an easy buck from an unsuspecting parent. If this was a stand alone flick, it wouldn't be so bad, but riding on the coattails of a brilliant piece like Atlantis makes it utterly inexcuseable.

This was, at best, a B-movie. That said, there were definately some interesting things. It's got some creative fight scenes, but I also found myself laughing at some of the sillier stuff. The "space caddy" was lame and totally made the movie cheap-looking. After the first 15 minutes I was bored buit stuck through to the end. Generally, I'd say it's an OK rental and an OK directorial debut. I can't understand why people think this film is whole.