Reviews

Every time I see a bad review of this film, they always focus on one thing: The rather liberal use of the n-word throughout the movie. The movie is offensive because of the n-word, they say, as if that alone negates everything that was done well with this movie (and there is a lot done well).

Oh look, they use a derogatory term for black people for a movie set in an era where black people were barely considered "people" in the first place. Oh look, they use a racist term for a movie set in a time when being a racist was pretty much the norm. The movie is bad for that reason alone...Really?

OK, I understand that, as a civilization, we are trying to grow up and move away from prejudice, but to condemn an art piece meant to depict a less-developed time because it clashes with your modern morals is, well, immature. Another thing, you act as if the movie directly insults you. At what point was the movie directing its insults at you? Not only are you offended out of context, it's also misdirected! How self-righteous and immature do you have to be to--- You know what, forget it. It's got nothing to do with the movie so it's not worth getting into.

What is worth getting into is why this movie is awesome. Considering this movie pushes the 3 hour mark, I'm amazed that it kept my attention through out the whole thing. That says something for the film because I'm one of those kind of guys who can barely keep focused on anything for more than twenty minutes. But here, I found myself intrigued by every single scene and how the story moved forward. So this movie gets an A from me from storytelling merits alone. Dialogue is balanced with exposition and the script, while shoddy in a few places, works well overall. The narrative is very much character-driven which I think is the film's biggest merit. It doesn't rely on big sets or numerous filler montages. The action scenes are short and brutal. And they should be because there's nothing fancy about the shootouts and these scenes are mostly direct to the point and leave a big impact. This ain't no kung-fu movie. The movie is all about the interaction and conflict if it's rather diverse and talented cast. Speaking of whom...

Though I think he's the weakest of the main characters, Christoph Waltz as Dr. King Schultz is still a very notable performance, probably one of the best in Waltz's career. I love the way he serves as the wise mentor figure in the story as well as providing most the comic relief. Schultz's cleverness displayed in the film is fun to watch and lends a certain respect to his character. And though he is played to be lighthearted most of the time, there are instances where we definitely see a hidden depth to Schultz. That said, it's also the character's weakness because, you know this guy has a long and likely very interesting history, and yet very little of that history is explored within the narrative. And that sucks. This guy should have his own movie really.

But of course the movie is focused on the title character Django (with a silent D) played by Jamie Foxx. This movie is all about Django coming to his own. Foxx handled that splendidly in my opinion. When we're first introduced to the character as a nervous and broken man who seemed lost in just about any environment, portrayed in a way that, strangely enough, reminded me of Forrest Gump somewhat. But as the story progress, Django matures, learns the ropes, gains confidence in himself, takes more risks, and generally grows from being Schultz's student to equal. Foxx's portrayal of this development is commendable. If you watch just the first and last 15 minutes of the movie, you'd think he was playing two completely different characters. Watching the movie is a whole, the gradual transformation of Django from rookie to pro is amazingly subtle though. Foxx's excellent performance makes sure that Django's development doesn't come off as forced or contrived and is believable throughout.

But my favorite character would be, hands down, Calvin Candie played by Leonardo DiCaprio whose performance is, in a word, sublime. Candie simply eats up any scene he's in. Even if you wanted to, you simply cannot deny his presence. And while he starts off as a non-too-serious antagonist when first introduced, we quickly realize that this is a man that one does not want to hang out with on a social basis. But that realization happens without the guy being overly diabolical about it, which lends to the believability of the character. And when Candie eventually does go off the chain he easily becomes the most memorable villain in film history. Much respect to Waltz but how DiCaprio did not get more Best Supporting Role award nominations (especially at the Oscars) is beyond me.

I don't have much to say about Samuel L. Jackson's character, Stephen, as he really only serves as a plot point that leads into the climax of the movie. Many people don't like it when you get a big name to play what is essentially a throw-away character. But I'm fine with it. For what little screen time he had, Jackson gave an excellent enough performance to be memorable.

So basically, yeah, awesome direction, awesome script, awesome characters played by awesome actors makes for a definite hall-of-famer in my opinion. This film will stay with me for a long time. It's a brutal, bloody, brilliant take on the darker parts of America's history not without its fair share of humor and wit. A must see film for anyone with any measurable appreciation for good cinema.

I know a good movie when I see one...This isn't one. But you can't really call it a bad movie.

Like much (read: all) of Zack Snyder's work, this movie is best watched with the reasoning part of your head mostly turned off. Just imagine that you're reading a cool comic book and then suddenly that comic decided it wanted to be a full length motion picture. That's essentially how I treated this movie and I believe that's really the only way to fully appreciate this movie.

On to the story. From the trailer, you can tell it's about escaping reality into a dream. The thing is that story is about a girl, called Baby Doll, who gets wrongly sent to a mental institution by an evil step-father. In order to escape the horrible reality of being trapped in the asylum, she escapes by imagining a dreamworld...where she is trapped in an illegal strip club / brothel...wait, what?

Anyway, while trapped in the brothel she comes up with a plan to escape an recruits a few friends. As they collect the needed items for their escape, she gives herself courage to go through the plan by...imagining herself in other crazy dreamworlds where she and her friends are super soldiers and her enemies are either zombies, cyborgs, mutants, or some strange combination of the former stuff.

So in case you missed that, she created dreamworlds to escape the horrible reality of the brothel, which is in itself a dreamworld she created to escape the horrible reality of the asylum...

And here is my biggest problem with the movie. Why the double layer of pseudo reality? I thought the story would be fine if they stuck with just brothel world. Or heck it would be also fine if they skip the brothel part and stuck with just being in the asylum. I think the only reason we even have the brothel part was because they needed an excuse to put the main cats in skimpy clothing (or, most likely, because Inception is still an internet meme at this point)

So the story kinda goes awry when we start jumping between one reality to another but overall, there is a solid plot that you can figure out if you think hard enough. It was a decent story but the character development was a little lackluster. Also, the word "acting" has a veeeeeery loose meaning here.

But the real appeal of this movie is of course the effects. Are the action sequences as crazy as we saw in the trailer? Yes. In fact what we saw in the trailers are just the tip of the iceberg. in typical Zack Snyder style, the action is intense, filled with complex choreography, cool use of weapons, sweeping camera movement, and the ever popular (read: quite annoying) use of slooooooooowwwwwww mooootioooon.

Granted, he does use the slo-mo thing rather tastefully, syncing the action with the movies awesome soundtrack. The slo-mo is bearable here, even appreciated at some scenes. But there was this once scene in the move where I think the slo-mo was pushing it a bit.

Credit to the guys who designed all of Baby Doll's dreamworlds though. The set design, both real and imagined, is excellent. Even though the movie is about escaping to non-reality, at least they didn't go totally into silly cartoon realms by removing all semblance of sense. It's like most Japanese anime: Nowhere near realistic, but not so removed from reason that you can't relate to it anymore.

Overall, the movie was enjoyable. It had a decent story and cast and the effects in the action scenes were quite entertaining. Not terribly memorable but I'll probably want to pick it up when it comes out on video.

Before this movie I was...vaguely aware of the original Tron. A week or so before the premier of this movie, I decided to lookup the original Tron. two days before Legacy started showing, I managed to get a copy and watched the original Tron. And those two days was the most agonizing wait of my life.

I loved the original Tron. It was instantly a favorite for me. It had an engaging story of a human trapped in a computer world that I found pretty damn original (considering this was made in the eighties and all. After all, I've seen the Matrix films long ago)

When Tron: Legacy finally came out, I was expecting a great story, great visuals, and an EPIC soundtrack (when the trailer said "music by Daft Punk" epic is pretty much a given at that point). I got plenty of the latter two, not so much of the former.

I really didn't have that much problem with the plot. I get the plot. It was a good plot. The biggest problem for me was that the characters were a bit shallow. The main hero of the movie, Sam Flynn, felt flat. And while I could tell he was trying hard to convey emotion (it worked at least once during a touchy scene) he had a hard time expressing himself. the character of Quorra essentially acted half her age (or at least her perceived age; I don't fully understand how programs view the concept of age) Some characters are pretty interesting, like Zeus, however, they get next to no development in the plot. Reeally, the most engaging character here was the original Flynn, and maybe that's just because Jeff Bridges was the most seasoned actor here.

And then there's Tron. The guy the named the movie after. Even in the original I never got why they named the movie after him since he didn't feel like the main character there (I felt it was more of Flynn's story). In Legacy, Tron basically is like Oddjob form Goldfinger. The dude has like ten seconds of dialouge...in total! Oh sure, he gets his awesome moments but if his name is the name of the movie, at least give the guy some good characterization (btw: they didn't)

Overall, the movie was a great visual ride but the lackluster storytelling brought it down a level or two. They had the makings of a great film. Instead Disney produced what is essentially gonna be a Cult hit as opposed to a mainstream one (which is what you expect from Disney).

But then, I realized. That's what they set out to make in the first place. A Cult hit. Think about it. The first movie was a box office failure because it appealed to a then very small audience (the geek community). And while that audience has grown significantly over the years, realize first that this is supposed to be a sequel to a movie made 25 years ago! I, personally, wasn't even born when the original came out. Very few people from Disney's usual target market (kids to young adults) actually know of the first movie, let alone have seen it.

Tron: Legacy is essentially a love letter to all the loyal fans of the first movie and Disney's attempt to make their own little isolated cult franchise. Who knows, with the open-ended conclusion of the film and several unanswered questions, another sequel maybe on the way.

Hopefully we won't have to wait another 20 or so years before that happens.

I remember that when I first watched "Pirates of the Caribbean" series, what really impressed me with that movie was the amazing sets and locales when they filmed it.

That feeling is repeated in this movie. The sets and the locations are simply amazing in this movie. If you're gonna praise somebody, big props to the set designers and production team. Just like in POTC they managed to take me to a far off rich fantasy world.

If you've played the games, you'll know that the stories are usually straight-forward (In some cases like the Dreamcast version there was no story at all!) and the focus of the games was all about action and running around in a big world full of things that just about anybody can grab/climb/swing/shimmy/jump off of.

So my first thought when I heard about this movie was "How the heck are they gonna come up with a decent story for the script based of the source material?" Wonder of wonders, the writers managed to come up with something pretty engaging...if not totally predictable. Anything with time travel, you know what the hero's gonna do at the end. Time travel solves everything.

But I'm getting ahead. The main story deals with the Prince, fallen from grace after being framed for murdering the King, running around all over the middle east to find proof of his innocence. And on his way there's lot's of running, sword-fighting, more running, sneaking around, free-running, and a really hard-to-believe-but-you-still-go-with-it-anyway romantic subplot that appears out of nowhere (It's Disney so you probably saw that coming)

And while this is from the producers of POTC, don't expect any over the top character acting like with Jhonny Depp/Jack Sparrow. Jake Gyllenhaal plays a pretty good Prince, though not exactly matching the character from the games. Jake's prince is a lot nicer, which does take away a bit of the Prince's bad-ass aura. Gemma Arterton plays the spoiled princess Tamina rather convincingly. Ben Kingsley's evil uncle Nizam is a note from James Bond book of Villainy but still somehow works for the movie.

Some characters I can live without, like Dastan's other brother, Garsiv. I don't know where the film-makers got him from but I felt that this guy was rather inconsistent. It's not the actor's fault though, Toby Kebbell did as good a job as he could do. The character is just badly written in the script and the movie would've been fine without him.

Overall, an enjoyable movie that must be seen in the theaters. Fans of the game may find a few things missing from the overall experience but in my opinion the film-makers did a decent enough job. While the story and acting are above-average at best, those visuals were simply meant to be seen on the big screen.

Many critics and fans will agree, the '99 American remake of Godzilla was disappointment. The movie fails in that people naturally expect a lot from a big budget monster movie. And how could they not? The movie is about a 120ft lizard after all.

But sadly the movie just failed to deliver. The director of the film traded unnecessary story and environmental preaching for what the fans really wanted: complete mayhem caused by a giant monster. Zilla was thereby lost in a sea of potential. He could've been great. He only needed a bigger, better, more bad-ass script.

Fortunately though, Zilla Jr. got everything his father never had and what every giant monster should have. Zilla Jr. was baddass! He had it all: Near-indestructible tenacity, awesome atomic breath powers, an ambiguous good/bad reputation, and most importantly, a crap load of other monsters to kick ass! I dare say that Zilla Jr. can even surpass the original Japanese Godzilla. I truly believe this and I don't care what anybody else says.

Godzilla: The Series redeemed the original source movie by being a highly imaginative series that takes all the best elements of classic monster flicks and amps them up for a 21st century. The characters and the stories are engaging and each episode, while still able to blend into a wider continuity, can stand alone in their own way (such is the style of American animated series) The direction is well done and the stories and monster battles Zilla Jr. get's himself into are quite imaginative. And if you say it's unbelievable...Well, it's a sci-fi animation series about giant monsters. 'Nuff said.

Heck, even the original Zilla Sr. managed to get redeemed in the series himself, being resurrected by aliens into a cyborg. How cool is that? If this is playing in a TV near you, watch it. If not, I seriously recommend getting the series on video.

We Are The Strange.

What can I say about this movie. It's an experience, to say the least. I can almost guarantee you that within the first ten minutes of the movie your first comment will be "What the ****?!" Looking at the title you'd think this movie was, well, strange. But 'strange' alone in a gross understatement. Saying this movie is "strange" is like saying the surface of the sun is "toasty." You might try to compare this to other strange movies like, say, Labyrinth, or Corpse Bride, but really you can't. You just can't.

More than anything else, this movie is a statement in visual art. The combination of stop-motion animation, 8-bit graphics, and CGI animation is both innovative and crazy to look at. The dark world that is StopMo city (get the name?) has almost no cohesive structure to it whatsoever. The fight scenes (if you can call them that) which were most definitely inspired by old school anime, is like watching a kid play with action figures. Actually the whole movie feels like it come from the deep dark recesses of some ten-year-old's abandoned toy chest.

The character designs are...innovative. The first Characters we meet Blue and HIM are probably the closest to normal anybody's gonna get in this film but that's not saying much. eMMM, Rain, and Ori look like they came from nightmares of Tim Burton. Despite the crazy designs however, each character's design, better than any other movie I've seen, reflects that character's personality, purpose, and even background almost perfectly. You take one look and you can easily say "Oh, this is the bad guy" or "Oh, definitely a tragic heroine" and so on.

The dialog (there's dialog in this movie?!) is few and far between. There's probably less than five minutes of speech throughout the entire movie...for all characters combined. Like I said, this is more on visuals. What dialog does exists is short and straight to the point. There are no pointlessly long exchanges between characters even for humor's sake. Each sentence spoken has heavy significance to the plot so when someone talks you'll know you should listen.

As for the plot (yes, boys and girls, there is a plot in here somewhere) it's hard to find at first, mainly because of the movie trying to visually rape your mind. But if you concentrate really hard (I mean reeeeeeally hard) there is a coherent plot about two lost tragic characters trying to find their way.

eMMM and Blue are the classic tragic heroes, both starting out at the bottom of the dumps then slowly but surely finding their courage within each other. the vigilante pair Rain and Ori, though feeling like a really bad ripoff of Batman and Robin, presented an exciting view of a wrongfully accused man and a misunderstood weirdo, fighting for justice. HIM is the stereotypical villain of the piece who thinks of only himself and thinks nothing of plunging the city into darkness if for nothing more than his own pleasure.

All of these character elements come together in a straight-forward plot line typical of most epic stories. The characters and their motivations are easy to understand once you get into the movie and it's easy cheer for the good guys and hate the bad guys (though HIM's low droning voice make it kinda hard to take him seriously) Watch this movie once to get a hang of the visuals. Watch it again to truly appreciate the story.

In conclusion, I loved this movie. I really did. It was weird yes, but refreshing in a way that it provided an escape from the usual canned mainstream coming out of Hollywood. It was an experience to savor. It's not boring. It never gets boring. Sure you'll feel like a weirdo for appreciating it, but maybe that's a good thing.

Just for chuckles, you should also watch the 1337 version.

From the title alone you pretty much know what you're getting into: a 100 minute long motion picture featuring ninjas, fighting, ninjas, killing, ninjas, lots of gore, ninjas, over-the-top action and special effects...did I mention ninjas?

And that's a good thing. The movie doesn't try to be anything more than what you'd expect it to be. You won't get surprised by any deep revelations about modern society half-way through the flick. There are no triple subplots you have to wrack your brain around. You get a tragic hero, villains, a typical damsel-in-distress, and a pretty straight forward plot.

When I went to this movie, I had fun watching it. Just what you'd expect from a Joel Silver production. And Rain makes a surprisingly good b-movie actor. When you watch this movie just sit back and enjoy.

And that problem is way too many characters with way too little development time. If you're a big fan of the comics and a few choice characters you will be slightly disappointed at how little screen-time certain characters get.

There were two characters I would've wanted to see more of: Gambit and Deadpool. Both characters have deep backgrounds to them and are both very interesting. However the movie treats them as throwaway characters with each getting less than ten minutes of screen time.

And then there's Cyclops. Really? Why bother putting him in the posters if you'll give him such a small part. They practically threw him away in X3 and now they just used him as fodder. Does Hollywood really have that little respect for all the really deep and interesting characters? However, at least I got what I expected most of the movie: a not too complicated but still personal story of Wolverine, kick-ass action scenes, and a tying up of many of the loose ends from the original X-men trilogy. The script and screenplay were very good and the director did a good job putting this movie together.

Despite its shortcomings, fans will find something to enjoy here. And if you've seen all the other X-men movies then I recommend you check this out.

Amazing how a simple concept can turn out to be quite a bit of entertainment. Normal everyday stuff viewed in high speed footage. Watching it for yourself, you see how mesmerizing that footage really is.

There's just something very weired and very attractive about watching something we take for granted in slow-mo. Seeing all the little complex details that happen in a split second of time and learning just what all those little details do is actually quite fun. I can certainly understand the reactions of their guests on the show and how they react when they watch what they do in slow-mo. It's really a case of "Wow, I never knew that. That's really interesting!"

Overall the shows true appeal is that it shows a whole new perspective on stuff we thought we already knew. It's really discovering something new in something old. And the show succeeds by presenting all this in a very entertaining way.

I've seen Blair Witch Project, Cloverfield, and Diary of the Dead. and I'm sure anyone who has watched those movies will almost immediately compare Quarantine to them, like I do.

Make no mistake that Quarantine is mostly just a chop-up of other famous horror/suspense titles that are pasted together. The feel of the movie is similar to Blair Witch, the look is similar to Cloverfield, the "zombies" are very similar to what we see in 28 Days Later/28 Weeks later. Although this movie seem to copy/paste a lot, it does it rather well and manages to make a fairly original feel, but just barely.

However there is a element to the film that makes it rather original from the other films of similar ilk. Unlike the three aforementioned titles this film is not a long event that takes place over several cuts of the camera. Instead, Quarantine has almost no break in the action (there are breaks were the camera is turned off but these breaks are very brief) This basically means that you are always on the edge of your seat. Always. There's no long dramatic narrations and dialogs either, everything is fast-paced but not too fast that you, the viewer don't pick up on vital information. From start to finish it's a non-stop 100 minute ride. That, by far, is what I think to be the movies biggest merit, mainly because it greatly heightens realism.

One other thing I feel I should mention is that the acting in this movie is brilliant. No really, I think it is. I know that horror movies are often panned for lousy acting (which more often that not is justified) but this movie's cast is really good and you'll almost forget that this is a movie.

All in all. A fantastic movie if your looking for a good scare. There will be plenty of opportunity for you to be jumping off your seat and screaming in shock.

I always hate it when all those high class critics from the newspapers and journals bash a film for not being what THEY want it to be and not looking at it for what its SUPPOSED to be.

The title is "Death Race" after all. No-one ever expected it to win any golden trophies in the first place. So what if the acting was a bit bland and the plot was a little weak. That's not was the movie is supposed th be about.

It's not a Martin Scorsese film where you sit back and think "Oh, that is very thought-provoking and I feel that I've truly learned something inspirational today." No. This is a film where you sit back, look at it, and think "Holy ****!! Did you see that ********** explosion?!"

This is a film where you have fun in. Don't worry if you walk away with nothing meaningful to talk about at the end. Go ahead and laugh at its stupidity. I guarantee you you'll still have a much better time that watching something like Capote

Let me start of by saying that if you've played of the game (either the original or the sequel or both) and you loved the game (and you probably did) do your best not to come to the movie with...too much expectations.

I myself have finished both games and loved them. I was pretty excited when news of the movie popped up on one of my RSS feeds. So I watched it the first opportunity I got. The movie didn't disappoint me but at the same time it left me wanting. By the end of it I was like "That's it?" Looking at the games you expect a lot of shooting. Not just "Once upon a time in Mexico" amount of shooting. I'm talking about "Rambo" x6 amount of shooting. And in this movie there was just not enough shooting. However I do think the filmmakers did a fine enough job in making the few shooting scenes in the movie pretty cool.

My biggest complain is with the main Character. Mark Wahlberg should've at least played the game to get a feel for Max but he didn't (according to the trivia section) and that's a big blunder in my book. If your playing an established character you need to study said character. If he did, maybe he would've done more shooting.

In the games Max is driven by revenge into a long and painful downward spiral into the depths of the underworld due to the murder of his wife and daughter. He is so consumed that he does not stop even in the face of death and dishonor and becomes a one man army. In the movie the motives are the same but Wahlberg's Max seemed...tamed compared to the game. in the movie Max seemed emulating some old 80's detective while ought to be more of a no-holds-barred, loose-cannon, cowboy. Maybe he just didn't do enough shooting.

Lastly, i just don't like how they added all these extra main characters to the story. Sure some of them were necessary but the Movie should've focused on the few main characters. That's one of the things that made the game great. You only follow the stories of the people who matter to the story. I don't like the new characters because they replace the roles of the game Characters. The major villain in the game was featured in the movie but the role of that character was severely underplayed and spread across several other characters. Not good. The filmmakers just ruined a character I loved to hate from the game.

All in all, a not so bad movie. It resembles the game in story and feel enough that it's still familiar to fans of the game. The action is pretty good, the cinematography is very good, and the direction is also good.

In the end of it all, the movie just needs more characterization a darker feel...and lots more shooting

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's an FnF clone. Anyone whose seen that movie just can't help but make a comparison (including myself). I'm pretty sure some of you out there are thinking 'it's just a carbon copy of FnF.' Well, the truth is it's not. it may be in the genre of street racing but it's not a straight up FnF clone. In some ways, it's better than The Fast and the Furious. What is is is a riveting drama that tells the story four separate people who can only be connected by their love for pure, unbridled speed.

The plot is driven by the personal pursuits of each individual character; Katie with her home garage on the brink of foreclosure, Mike with his need to prove himself on the street, Eric with his desire for control of his life, and Nicole with her need to spice up her life.

Each personal conflict of these characters makes them more real and more relatable than that of the characters in the FnF series who were a bit bland and plastic. And the actors themselves gave quite a good performance as well.

The action sequences were not that bad either. The racing sequences were well done but not exaggerated to the point of ridiculous. If only this movie had the same budget given to Hollywood movies then maybe we could've really seen some fireworks.

All in all, it's a movie worth watching. Don't expect any award-winning stuff but that's not the point of this movie.