Change Your Image
UKfootball21
Reviews
We Were Soldiers (2002)
Cheesy and stupefyingly unoriginal
SPOILERS BELOW!!! I cannot believe this movie is rated as high as it is.
You will be able to predict every bit of this re-tread war movie - nothing is original. Go ahead and skip the first 40 minutes because I can summarize it in a few sentences: Mel Gibson can't act, nor can he pull off a southern accent. Mel's character has a doting wife and five children and he prays really hard so god can let him kill bad guys and military life is tough on the whole family. And there are other wives, too. One is a minority and one is retarded.
Then Mel prays with his soldiers like a kid prays to Santa. Then they go to a golf course in Northern California and pretend they are in Viet Nam. The worst set/location I've ever seen in a war movie. They didn't even try - unless you think Viet Nam is mostly 6-inch tall grass and a few 15-foot birch trees planted by a landscaper a week before.
The filmmakers were obviously aware that the golf course didn't look very real, which really blew the cinematography. They had to frame every shot so that it didn't reach beyond 20 feet and reveal the potted trees they drag around as the "jungle." Along the way, they throw in every single war movie cliché you could ever imagine and a person who has never seen the movie will probably be able guess most of the lines before they are said.
This is trash.
Dear Mr. Watterson (2013)
Lame Hipster makes love letter to himself rather than a real documentary
I love Calvin & Hobbes as much as anyone. Unfortunately, this documentary is just a narcissistic exercise for the narrator, who wants you to watch him reading Calvin & Hobbes comics. And, in true Hipster fashion, his "favorite C&H comic" is one that "nobody else" talks about - only he can "realize" it's genius.
The only interesting parts are the interviews with other popular comic strip writers who respect Bill Watterson and give some insight on his work, which is truly only Berke Breathed. (And curiously absent is Gary Larsen and Garry Trudeau, his only real peers, besides Breathed.)
There was no discussion about any attempt to interview Watterson for the documentary or why he declined, and very little exploration into his life. He grew up outside of Cleveland - that's it; that's all you'll get from the film.
Much worse, there is no exploration, much less mention of, Watterson's misguided take on the internet given in interviews during its early days that is laughable in today's context, especially when you consider what people do with their old newspapers. It's as if the filmmaker knew very little about Watterson when he complains that newspapers weren't giving due respect to Watterson's work, when newspapers were Watterson's preferred method of publishing.
What you will see is half of the film showing the narrator/director with his douchey, fresh-out-of-the-make-up-chair haircut in close-up head- shots pouring over comics like he just discovered the Dead Sea Scrolls. This documentary could have been so much better. I only hope the interviewees will sacrifice their time again when somebody with talent makes a serious effort in documenting what could be a fascinating subject.
Luftslottet som sprängdes (2009)
Worst of the three -- What happened??
I'm a fan of this series: I read the books and saw the first two films in this trilogy. I thought the first two films were good, very enjoyable to watch; and generally captured the spirit of the novels.
Hornet's Nest, in contrast, drags on and really butchers the novel. I understand that a book is almost always better than the movie version, and that changes must be made to adapt a book to screen. However, there were changes made for this film, which did not tighten up the story and ended up making the movie quite disjointed. Also, the actors' portrayal of the characters in Hornet's Nest was over the top to the point where they became insufferable and unsympathetic.
Bloomkvist turns into a selfish whiner, rather than the action hero he was in the first two. Salander hardly speaks in this movie, culminating in a finale of silence as she battles the mostly-mute giant. Berger doesn't even need to be in this movie. This is supposed to be a series about feminism, but Berger's only purpose in this movie is to be a whiny, bitter ex-girlfriend who is paralyzed by fear the whole time. We lose all three heroes of the trilogy in favor of smaller characters that aren't developed.
The courtroom scene was absolutely butchered. It is so anti-climactic and poorly done that it ruined the movie for me. This is the big moment, where all of the evidence comes together and the attorney has a shot at a gripping cross-examination scene, but it ends in . . . crickets . . . Reading 50 pages about the trial in the novel would go by quicker than the 20 minutes of the film. There was no tension, nor build-up, and the "gotcha" moment of cross-examination was non-existent.
The movie also fails to properly tie the reporting and publishing of the magazine to the legal drama; they are treated as separate story lines that don't ever come together. This is another deviation from the novel which does not help the movie. I don't understand why they changed the story to have Berger push to halt the publication -- the only result of this twist is that the characters all end up looking weak and it diminishes any reason to cheer for the heroes' magazine that is supposed to be central to the plot (setting Salander free).
The January Man (1989)
Amazingly bad
With an impressive cast, I expected much more. I was a bit of a fan of Kevin Cline and I was amazed at how bad his acting was in this. I sometimes wonder if this movie was supposed to be a tongue-in-cheek parody because none of the characters are believable.
Cline was so unbelievable in his character that the movie becomes un- watchable at times. The character he was portraying was also too much of a stretch. The character was maybe too "complex" in that he was trying to be too many things at once and none of it meshed.
I can't tell if this was supposed to be a "serious" role for Cline. His "New York" accent is so bad.