Change Your Image
tafkaga4
Reviews
The Sacketts (1979)
Enjoyable western for western fans
The Sacketts was fun to watch if you like actors like Tom Selleck, Sam Elliot, Ben Johnson and Glenn Ford. Other than having a great cast, there's nothing ground-breaking here. In fact this film at times seems a little bit too casually made, as if they were just trying to throw it together, collect their paycheck, and move on to the next project.
There are a number of things that are distractingly bad in this film, and here are a few that I noticed.
1. When they are on the cattle drive, they send Tyrell ahead to scout out water for the horses. Tyrell says he doesn't know the country, but they send him anyway. Tyrell finally does find water. A minute later he's under gunfire from rustlers who want to stampede the herd. Two minutes after that, the owner of the herd himself shows up saying that he came when he heard gunshots. Was Tyrell only scouting a half mile ahead of the herd? 2. Glenn Ford's death scene was really awful. By the position he was laying in, it would have been more practical for his hand to fall against his chest and his eyes to just glaze over. Instead, he went for the dramatic effect of twitching his head to the side and closing his eyes while pulling his hand from Selleck's and tossing it to the ground.
3. The scene where Tell Sackett goes to cut the bad guys' horses loose. It was supposed to be the middle of the night, yet it was broad daylight outside. Oh, but they had the sound of whippoorwills dubbed in to fool us. Unfortunately the fact that it was not the slightest bit dark kind of tipped me off, unless they somehow made their camp fire strong enough to light up the whole valley.
Starrcade (1986)
A mixed bag of classic NWA action!
NWA Starrcade '86 was hyped as 'Night of the Skywalkers'. The match that earned it that tagline was a tag team scaffold match between the Road Warriors and the Midnight Express (Eaton & Condrey). This match was entertaining as a novelty, but only barely. The wrestlers involved were obviously unable to perform to the best of their ability due to fear of falling from the scaffold. Who could blame them? This meant a very slow match with a lot of punches and a few stomps, and a lot of holding onto things. It reminded me of four grown men playing on a jungle gym, and was overall fun to watch if you don't set your expectations too high.
The best matches of the card were the Andersons vs. the Rock'n'roll Express and Ric Flair vs. Nikita Koloff. Although neither of those matches are what I would consider stellar, they were solid and enjoyable. Much of the rest of the card was not terribly interesting or inspired, such as Wahoo McDaniel vs. Rick Rude in an Indian Strap match, Jimmy Valiant vs. Paul Jones in a Hair vs. Hair match, Ronnie Garvin vs. Bubba Rogers in a Louisville Street Fight, and Dusty Rhodes vs. Tully Blanchard in a First Blood match. This one was particularly disappointing to me, as I know what both men are capable of, and this match was not what I would consider a great showing for either.
Overall I would call it a pretty mediocre card. If you like classic NWA wrestling like I do, you will enjoy Starrcade '86. Otherwise I don't think this pay-per-view event will be incredibly enjoyable. It was most definitely not among the best that I've seen from Jim Crockett Promotions.
Kingdom of Heaven (2005)
Worst medieval film I've seen in a while
I'm a junkie for Braveheart. I love that movie. It had the perfect mix of drama, romance, humor, character development, and gory battle scenes. I love the medieval period, and had high hopes that Kingdom of Heaven would please me like Braveheart did. It couldn't have come farther from the mark.
This film failed to elicit a single emotional response from me. I felt no laughter, no sorrow, no joy, no disgust, nothing. The good guys were bland and the bad guys were boring. The development of these characters left much to be desired. I cared little for any of them, and I found myself checking my clock to see how much more time I'd have to endure before the end came.
The plot really had promise. It's hard to think of a more interesting and bloody period in the last 2000 years than the Crusades to take the Holy land...yet somehow this film failed interest me. It tried to cover far too much ground in the short time that it ran, and sacrificed a lot of necessary character development in order to cover that ground.
Although I'm sure many LOTR fans will disagree, I found Orlando Bloom to be an unfortunate choice to play the lead. I want to see him commanding the Queen's army and carving up Muslims by the dozen about as much as I want to see Justin Timberlake play Conan the Barbarian. His acting was satisfactory, but nothing spectacular, and I found it very difficult to feel anything for his character in one way or another.
I had hopes that at least there would be some great battle scenes. Cheated again. The battle scenes were for the most part incredibly brief and undramatic, as well as badly edited. There were a few times where the film skipped from showing us the armies marching to battle to showing us a corpse-littered battlefield. Just another way that this film fails to deliver.
The good in this movie would have to be the costume design and the locations. It felt very authentic, but that was not enough to draw me in. It was also great to see Alexander Siddig, who I've enjoyed watching since Star Trek DS9. In fact I could say that I found Siddig's scenes the most watchable of all.
Bottom line is, if you're looking for a good medieval war movie... try Braveheart, Troy, or even Gladiator. All three of the previously mentioned films have got plenty of character and plot development, as well as tear-jerking drama, and plenty of bloody epic battles. Kingdom of Heaven is rather light in all of the fore-mentioned areas.
Van Helsing (2004)
Annoying cgi-loaded kiddie movie
Jam packed with witty one-liners between hero and villain, distracting special effects, and unrealistic "whoa dude like, cool!" moments, this film is one to avoid unless you are looking for a light hearted shallow adventure flick.
Unless you find Frankenberry and Count Chokula to be scary, you won't be the least bit frightened by this one either. This movie doesn't evoke tension or suspense whatsoever. It's in-your-face monsters for the whole two hours. It's impossible to take the "horror" seriously, since the heroes don't seem to be the least bit scared throughout the entirety of the movie. Van Helsing, much like Batman, spouts one-liners while seeming completely relaxed as he takes on Dracula and his dark minions.
This is definitely more of a fantasy movie for kids, very reminiscent of Batman with Van Helsing as the superhero with his wide variety of gadgets (gas-powered rapid-fire crossbow anyone?).
Batman Begins (2005)
Disappointing
The Batman films have always been a disappointment to me. Despite all the hype and the seemingly endless praise by other Batman fans, for me Batman Begins continues in the tradition of disappointing Batman films. And after watching two brilliant Spider-Man films, I can't quite understand why Hollywood can't give Batman the same treatment.
What I liked: 1. Christian Bale was the best of the Batmans to date, edging out Michael Keaton for that honor. Although I don't think Keaten's Batman was nearly as interesting of a character which I'd have to blame on the writers rather than the actor.
2. Seeing so many good actors in one film like Michael Kane, Liam Neeson, Morgan Freeman, and Rutger Hauer.
What I disliked: 1. Action scenes were confusing and hard to follow. Too many close-ups and switching camera angles resulted in it being hard to tell what was going on at any one point in time. I can't appreciate a fight scene if they don't present it in a way that I can really watch.
2. Bruce Wayne is given a bunch of really neat toys, and immediately knows how to use them to perfection. Yes, I know he was trained as a fighter by Ducard, but this doesn't explain all of the abilities that Batman suddenly picks up once he gets the toys. Take for example the scene where he's driving on rooftops in the Batmobile. This was a little bit unbelievable. If they were going to show us how Bruce Wayne became Batman, they should have come up with a better way of explaining how he suddenly mastered the use of all of these tools. The way they portray it, any black belt could be Batman if they had the same toys.
3. Villains...too many of them, and none of them make any great impression. Scarecrow did not seem like that big of a threat once they were done with him. Zsasz amounted to zero. Ra's Al Ghul was beaten up in the first hour of the movie by Bruce Wayne. The only good villain that the Batman movies have ever had is the Joker from the original Batman.
4. Motives. These were a little weak. Al Ghul, Ducard, and Company wanted to destroy Gotham City because it was immoral. How many times has this storyline been recycled? The bad guy always wants to a) rule the world or b) destroy X location and kill millions. It's pretty hard to take them seriously when we, as the viewing audience, KNOW that their plot has no chance of succeeding from the moment it comes out of their mouth.
5. Bruce is trained by Ducard to face his fears and join their Shadow warriors or whatever. Then just as Bruce is ready to lead the ninjas, they suddenly inform him that he has to execute a guy first. 1 minute later the building is on fire and Bruce is trying to kill the guy who he was just about to go to work for. The whole plot twist was so abrupt that it just seemed to fall flat and didn't make a whole lot of sense.
Overall I'd say if you really like Batman that you'll either love or hate this film. It's a pretty ridiculous movie, but it can be entertaining if you don't expect much from it. If you are the type that tends to analyse a film too much, you won't like this one...because it's not exactly what I'd call a classic. I'd put it in Tier 2 of superhero movies under Spider-Man 1 & 2 and right over the horrible X-Men films.
Into the West (2005)
I had high hopes, but it didn't quite deliver.
I really had high hopes for this mini-series, but it left me very unimpressed. Other people liked it and that's fine, but I was hoping for a series more about characters than a history lesson. If you've ever seen the mini-series Centennial, it's a great example of a mini-series that spans about two centuries of time but stays centered on the characters. In Into the West there were too many interesting characters introduced who were killed off in one episode or never followed up on. Josh Brolin's and Graham Greene's characters are just two examples. I also did not like the fact that they brought in different actors to play older versions of the characters rather than just making the original actors look older. It's especially hard to accept when the actors/actresses don't look or sound anything alike.
I did not particularly care for the Indian portion of the story. With Dances With Wolves as one of my favorite all time movies, I can't quite put a finger on why I didn't like this one. I just felt more like I was reading a history text book than I was watching a good movie. The treatment of the Native Americans was disgusting, but it didn't leave me with the same feeling of sadness that some other westerns like Dances With Wolves or even Little Big Man had done.
At first I thought this would be about a young man adventuring with Jebediah Smith and his mountain men...sounded pretty exciting, but it didn't take enough time to really allow itself to get interesting. Then I thought that this movie would be about a white man living with an Indian woman in a Lakota village. It's been done before, but that didn't mean it couldn't be done well again. Then I thought that maybe it would be about a wagon train moving west. That has also been done before, but that didn't mean it couldn't be done well again. Finally I figured that this would be a movie that roves around from setting to setting, tragedy to tragedy like How the West Was Won. Since I've never been a fan of How the West Was Won, I figured this movie would be a disappointment to me... and I was right.
I was really impressed with Tonantzin Carmelo as Thunder Heart Woman. Any scene she was in was made better for her presence, and I hope to see her in other films in the future.