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God of War: Chains of Olympus (2008 Video Game)
7/10
Great game ruined by awful combo system
18 December 2008
GoW:CoO is a really nice game, but it has some serious flaws.

At first, I must say the graphics are beyond awesome. It's pure PS2 quality on your hand-held, you have to see it to believe it! Nothing wrong with this part. The story is really nothing special, it's about Kratos who wants to get rid of his visions, but the Gods don't let him, and he must fight. That's it. No twists, no turns, and at the end you get a somewhat disappointing conclusion.

Now, we got to the crucial point of the game: the controls and the gameplay. During your adventure, you will encounter many enemies (but the fights are in more than 60% of the cases are blatantly staged!), and you have to use your weapons and magic. Now the control scheme is brilliant, considering that the PSP lacks a second analog stick. I've never played any GoW games before on PS2, so I thought it was meant to be this way. And the guys did a splendid job with the port. So you won't be suffering to make Kratos do what you want him to do. But you will be suffering when you will find out that you don't have complete control over him! And this is the greatest flaw of the game. Although the gameplay isn't too inspiring (puzzle solving, staged fighting, puzzle solving, staged fighting, and so on, ad infinitum), the beautiful graphics will blow you away as you discover new areas, and because of this, you won't mind the mediocre gameplay schemes, trust me. But there are serious problems in the area of controls. You can launch your heavy attacks with the triangle, your light attack is on the square, jump is X, and sometimes the game will prompt you to press circle. You can chain your attacks, launching multiple hit combos on your opponents, and that's nice, BUT... and here it is, the big BUT, which ruins your experience: once Kratos started a combo, you can't get him out of it! This is especially frustrating, when you trying to play the "one hit and you're dead" challenge, where you have to abuse the L trigger + triangle combo to win. No, seriously it's about the only way you can defeat them in that challenge! Whenever I tried to play it skillfully, I've always seen 2-3 seconds before I got hit that I will get hit. And this is wrong! Being able to see that you're about to get hit and not being able to do something about it is the worst video game experience you could ever have. Except for playing a really bad game, of course, but that's beside the point. The point is: there are combos that last for 10-15 seconds, and once you've started them, Kratos will do it, no matter what you push when you realize that the enemies will strike you. And yes, it's the same with the enemies too! So once they've started the attack animation, you can do nothing to prevent them from hitting you - and this is just bullshit! Sorry for being this harsh, but this is a really poor combo system. You have to have some kind of combo breaker move, for Christ's sakes! But no. You don't.

So all in all, when playing on medium, this is not really an issue, because the game isn't that hard. Your frustration begins on hard and god mode and when you play through the challenges. When there's no room for errors, this game fails to give you the results of your skills. Even if you're the best reflex-gamer of the world, you won't be able to enjoy your reflexes, because you cannot use combo breaker moves. This ruins the gameplay when you want to beat the game in god mode, and sadly it ruins any more experience with this game, because after you've realized this, you can't just look away. And Kratos' moves are beautiful, and some combos are like a dance, so this game really deserved a better combo system! I'm sad, but this game really isn't that good. It's worth playing through once, but then you can forget all about it. It's a real pity...

I would've given it a 6/10, but the great graphics saved the game, so it's 7/10 now. Rent or buy? RENT, definitely.
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Daxter (2006 Video Game)
6/10
Anti-climatic story, average gameplay
11 November 2008
I sincerely don't get what's all this fuss about this game. This is a mediocre platformer with great graphics. I mean the graphics are good, but the story is disappointing and the gameplay is boring. It's so repetitive! And it's not even fun after a few hours...

You're just doing the same things over and over again. And near the end, the game gets hard and annoying. Not a good game, I didn't like it. And the story doesn't even get a decent conclusion! It was just so anti-climatic...

The good:

1. Graphics are nice 2. The cutscenes are funny 3. It has a style in graphics 4. The enemies are cool

The bad:

1. Leveldesign. Repetitive, and there are only a few great ideas, like the floating wood in the sawmill. The rest is nothing special. 2. The controls are sometimes awkward 3. The camera is driving you nuts constantly! When you're backed up against a wall, there's no way you can turn it around to see what's directly in front of you! It's madness! Even though you can control the camera with L and R, you often curse the inane camera movement... 4. The story. It's clichéed, it's boring and it doesn't have a closure! What were they thinking??? It was so anti-climatic, I stared at the screen of my PSP for minutes after the endsequence, and thought "That's it?" Come on! 5. The bossfights aren't exciting. Something is wrong with them. I can't tell you what, but they weren't as good as they could've been...

Overall, I give it a 6/10.
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Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (I) (2003 Video Game)
6/10
Great graphics, lame gameplay
11 November 2008
To be honest, I couldn't play this game all the way through. I wanted to play an exciting platformer, but what I got was almost zero excitement! The structure of this title is very simple: you start with a platformer part, where you swing on bars, pull switches horizontally and vertically, solve puzzles, walk on ledges, do the wall-run from The Matrix (well, this is a nice feature, I have to admit), and stuff like that. And then, here comes the part, where you have to fight. But these fights are staged, and just aren't a least bit interesting! Let me tell you what's wrong with them.

First of all: there are only a few types of enemies, you can fight. And... no bosses! You have to slice scarabeuses in half, you have to slash dozens of sand creatures, and they are always the same! Nothing new for so long, I gave up the game at 50%. And yeah, you only have a few fighting moves as well. At the first few occasions, you can beat them only using one move, when the prince jumps from their heads to the behind of their backs, turns mid-air and slashes them. It's a great move, but it's unblockable by your poor antagonists, so you repeat it over and over again, you win but you become bored very quickly. And if you want to fight nicely without abusing a move too much, I've got news for you: you can only use your sword and your dagger, you can slash and stab with them and that's it. No combo moves, no skillful fighting, no reaction moves, combo breakers, no nothing. It just blows my mind! Why is this so goddamn lame? Later on in the game, the almighty move becomes blockable by the enemies (the developers must have been realized how idiotic was it actually...), but now the problem is that... they ALWAYS block it! Well... you still can't fight skillfully because the prince's recovery time after a failed (or blocked) strike is unbearably slow (I've seen turltles moving much faster), and if you're on the ground, the enemies can hit you repeatedly, and the prince just doesn't want to get up! What's wrong with him??? Ridiculous. Anyways, so they always block the head jumping move, you can't do nothing... but hey, you have another unblockable move: this time you have to back against a wall, press the jump button and then the attack button, and voilá: they can't block this move! Seriously: it's ludicrous! Close to that point when I stopped playing this game, I won a fight repeating this method about 30 times! Come on! When you play the jumping/puzzle solving parts you get a straightforward and linear experience. Nothing exciting or innovative there. The fight parts are extremely poor, so there's no reason to get this game so far. Two aspects were missing from my review, but now I will mention them now: the story and the ability to reverse time.

So, the story is nothing special, really. The only thing worth mentioning here is the interactions between the prince and the girl (Oh, my god, I forgot her name... Talk about a poor story, they couldn't even emphasize the second most important character in the game!), but those are so few and far between... and they aren't even always funny. So the story sucks. The prince's narrative is a nice thing, but once you get used to it, it's not a big deal anymore, besides he only talks at the beginning, then very rarely, and then when you die.

Throughout your "adventures", you can use the sands of time, which are giving you the ability to turn back time. It requires some "four dimensional thinking", but not much. After a while, it gets old too. And in the platformer parts, you only use it to get a continue after you miss a jump. So what's the point? All in all, I give this title a solid 6 stars. It's an average game, they didn't screw it up completely and for a while it was entertaining. But then it became repetitive, and couldn't give me anything new. Boring platform parts, lame fights. The graphics are amazing, hence the +1 star. I say, avoid it, if you don't want to get frustrated!
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WALL·E (2008)
9/10
The perfect way how not to make this movie perfect
1 August 2008
Warning: Spoilers
I loved almost all the Pixar movies, I rated several of them 10/10, and I still have hopes that they will make another perfect movie after Finding Nemo. But I have to wait, because Wall-E wasn't the movie I was waiting for 5 years. It could have been, but it wasn't.

The premise is somewhat similar to I am Legend, but in a cute way. So I can totally forgive this. In the first 20 minutes, the creativity of the Pixar guys shines on the screen: you see gags after gags after gags. These jokes make you interested in the title character, but I still think the exposition was too short. And here it is, the first appearance of the movie's fundamental problem: the creators didn't fully build up the characters. Something is missing. Something, which is so important for us to be fully involved in a movie, and it's not here. Therefore when the first plot-development happens (the arrival of EVE) you are a little off. Not much. Just a little.

We get yet another exposition, this time with more gags. It sounds repetitive, but it isn't. Actually, it's good. Not brilliant, but pretty good. But something is missing again: we don't get enough character-buildup to REALLY care about them. I wrote the keyword in caps, because both characters are involving, so of course I care about them, most of all because I have a heart.

This movie tries to play with your heart. That's why the missing element is so obvious: if you're watching a thought-provoking movie, if it's slightly flawed, you still can be pretty involved in it - but no one can deceive your heart. And Wall-E is an emotional movie, not an intellectual one. That's why I can't really tell you what's missing. Because I don't KNOW what it is, (the character-buildup thing is the closest thing I can mention)I just FEEL it...

Then another 20 minutes pass, and another plot development occurs. This time, this puts you in a completely new environment. The creativity of the Pixar guys shows yet again, it's entertaining, clever, a little blatant (basically they shouting "MORAL MESSAGE!" right into your ear in every scene involving humans from now on...), but you can forgive that. After all, it's a nearly perfect movie. Nearly...

You get the idea: the initial flaw never disappears, and when the credits rolled, I still wanted something more. I was waiting for something that never happened. I was waiting for the moment, when the movie totally sucks you into itself. The moment, when you can't escape. The moment, I get teary eyes. On this movie, I never did...

I admit, that I'm a guy and I got teary eyes while watching Monsters, Inc. (several times!), and that movie grabbed me by my heart in the first 2 minutes. The Toy Story movies were perfect too, so was Finding Nemo.

On to the plot twist of this review: because we're talking about feelings, you don't have to take what I say for granted. Something was missing from this movie, but you're not me. You're you, with different feelings and different views. And a different heart. So even if I couldn't fully identify with this movie, you still have all the chance to do so. I strongly recommend you to watch it, because it certainly has the potential of a masterpiece. It wasn't one for me, but if this movie hits you, you will be amazed and enchanted. Just like I was when I first watched Monsters, Inc.

9/10
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5/10
It's been 10 years...
17 December 2007
Warning: Spoilers
... since I first heard about this movie being made, and when the trailers hit the small screen, I was really excited, even though I didn't find Alien 3 a good sequel to the brilliant first two films of the saga. Alien 3 had underdeveloped storyline. It had a few great elements (especially towards the end), but that's it. I never really got into that movie.

The premise of this movie seemed intriguing: scientists capture a bunch of aliens, doing various kinds of experiments on them. Wow! This will be a great movie - I thought.

But I was wrong. A:R failed to deliver on almost all levels of entertainment.

Story-wise it was okay at best. Scientists, yes, but they don't show you too much experiments. Just one scene made it into the final cut, when the main bad guy, the evil scientist tortures an alien then it learns which switch does that and becomes afraid of it. Big deal! We already knew aliens are smarter than a dog, so even if it's memorable, it has no impact whatsoever.

Effects-wise it has nice details and an unique feel for it, but again, nothing special. Aliens look slimier than ever and I didn't like that. Look at the original alien in the 1979 movie: it was smooth and clean, huge and sinister. These new ones are smaller, slimier and don't look that frightening. Sure they're faster, but that's not the aliens' main strength. It is the fear they generate that matters, and it's minimal in this movie. "Aliens" on the other hand also featured smaller, faster and slimier aliens than the original one, but it had great story, great cast and brilliantly directed scenes. Although their charisma was downgraded a bit, the movie was equally good. Cameron created memorable scenes using the aliens, while Jeunet failed to come up anything that catches you off-guard. Even the swimming aliens were somewhat dull. You could see that from a mile and a half away...

And we've now come to the most important aspect of this movie, which could've saved it completely. Characters. Having great characters in a movie is essential to the storytelling. It was Hudson, Hicks, Vasquez, Ripley, Burke, Ash, Lambert, Parker and the others who made the first two movie. In the third movie it was hard to find anyone who matched Ripley, but Clemens came close. Anyhow, that movie at least had decent ones. A:R only has Ron Perlman as Johner, and that's it. And he isn't even playing a character, it's just that he has a certain screen presence which I happen to like. But I couldn't give the slightest damn about anyone in this movie. Not even Ripley.

Well, that's a bit confusing. Ripley is dead, isn't she? Yep. She is. This "Ripley" we see in this movie is completely changed. She's an alien. Thus the Alien series lost their most important character, and it's a disaster when you cannot even like the main protagonist in a movie. Her mood, her tone of voice, her remarks, her view... all has changed to... well, alien. She even has acid blood for crying out loud! And no, the problem is not that she was cloned. The problem is that you can't root for a person like this. And in the end, there's no one else left. You don't care about the characters, the story or about the newborn alien, whose design is beyond ridiculous. Come on! Giger is spinning in his grave! Overall, it turns out to be a movie that you don't care about. It's not good, it's not bad, it's completely neutral. So it's right in the centre of your rating system. One viewing is enough, because you can think about what went wrong, and how it could've been better, but that's it. End of story.

5/10
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The IT Crowd (2006–2013)
8/10
I expected geek humor, but got something else... (S1 review)
30 September 2007
Warning: Spoilers
Season 1 review (No Spoilers!) ... but this is not the reason why I didn't give it a higher rating.

When I first heard about this series, I was hoping that it is full of geek jokes, computer stuff, and the like. When I actually started watching the series, I didn't get what I was hoping for, but it was a great experience - which lasted only for 3 episodes...

The first episode was good. You really get to know the characters, and I have to say that Moss is brilliant! His accent is the best thing in this show! The jokes sometimes fall flat (especially after the third episode), but the first episode scored a 8/10 in my book. Then came the second episode, which I think is the best episode of the first season: it's a 9/10.

Then the series went downhill so quickly, I wondered, what were the creators thinking. Lame situations and boring plots followed by dumb jokes. The Bill Crouse episode (the one in which Moss says that Jen is dead) is the absolute worst episode I've seen in any series ever. I mean, seriously, what was that all about? It wasn't funny, it was just stupid. I gave it a 4/10, because it had Moss and the others in it, but come on...

Then came the closing episode with "Aunt Irma", and... it wasn't as bad as the previous one, but it wasn't good.

I'm waiting to see Season 2, but I sincerely hope that the creators realize, what kind of humor they should do if they want to make good episodes.

6/10 for the whole Season 1.
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3/10
Disturbing but nearly worthless piece of cinema
16 April 2007
Warning: Spoilers
HUGE SPOILERS! First of all: I haven't seen any of the previous Hannibal movies, so I'm basing my review sheerly on this movie.

The film starts off as something which seems somewhat a conventional revenge story, but you kinda know that there's more, because the title character is Hannibal, the cannibal, so I said to myself: "How will they do it?" The movie tries to accomplish what's nearly impossible for filmmakers, who aren't geniuses: it tries to force the audience to root for a man, who eats his victims' cheeks. Well, it's not impossible to accomplish. Kubrick did it once, when he made A Clockwork Orange, in which you can somewhat sympathize with Alex, who are raping and murdering left right and center. You sympathize with him, you care for him, but not in the conventional way. It's something else. It's a special relationship you have with the character. It's pure brilliance, what Kubrick did there.

In Hannibal Rising, the title character's portray is... wrong. I can't quite put my finger on it, but it's obviously wrong. And after a good hour into the movie, this film turns into a mess, full of glaring plot holes, too convenient, unrealistic situations (every single bad guy gives Hannibal the next piece of the puzzle - gets a little boring for the 4th time...) and unsympathetic characters (even the Japanese girl turns into an alien around the middle of the movie).

So you're wondering what's this totally uninvolving thing you're watching right now, and then you find out there's one more bad guy, currently living in Canada. The man, who seemed to be the main bad guy told this to our "hero" when he tortured him. Well, his methods get pretty old, when you see this particular thing at the fifth time...

Then the ship blows up, they think he's dead, yadda-yadda-yadda. But no, he's not dead (what a surprise!), he's on his way to Canada, where he meets the last bad guy and tells him a hilariously bad one-liner (he only had one good moment in the whole movie, so that's not saying much...), and the movie is closing with a pointless final shot of a car from behind. What's the deal with this? What's the greatness in this? Am I the only one who fails to see it? All in all, if you want to watch a disturbing revenge movie, try Kill Bill. If you want to watch a disturbing and disgusting revenge movie with unlikeable characters and almost zero substance and entertainment factor, then Hannibal Rising is your movie!

3/10
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The Wild (2006)
5/10
Not even Kiefer Sutherland could save this movie...
4 February 2007
No spoilers in this review!

"You're gonna have to trust me." (Jack Bauer - "24" Season 2)

When I first heard about this movie, I thought: "A movie with a lion voiced by Kiefer Sutherland? That's awesome!" All my friends kept telling me, that it won't be any better than Madagascar (which we unfortunately watched in the theater back in '05), and I told them: "No way, this movie's gotta be good, it has Kiefer Sutherland as a LION, man, how can this go wrong?" Well, sadly, it did go wrong.

On the "+" side:

+ The animator and modeler guys did a great job. Everything looks great, especially the lions. Wow!

+ Some of the jokes are funny.

+ It has a brief scene with the song "Clocks" (by Coldplay) in the background. Although the sequence ends rather abruptly, it really was a breath of fresh air. And I love Coldplay.

On the "-" side:

  • It doesn't have Scarlett Johansson in the cast. OK, just kidding. Real cons coming right up...


  • The characters are so clichéd, there isn't any life in them. They're not living. Yes, I'm dead serious. And yeah, that includes Samson too.


  • Kiefer Sutherland sounds tired and bored. Well, it's a major minus, because we all know, that Kiefer Sutherland can be a voice of a lion any day of the week. But sadly, he sounded much much more badass in a hockey commercial i saw recently on YouTube, than now, as a lion. What the...? I just don't get it. Not to mention his voice as Jack Bauer: now, that's four billion times cooler than this. What happened?


  • Tries so hard to avoid copying Madagascar, it falls into imitating it on many levels. Both movies have a female giraffe as a main character. This time, she's not suffering from hypochondria, but come on... About the other similarities, well, you have to see them for yourself. But I warned you!


  • The plot of the movie... well, it's underdeveloped, clichéd and boring, but not bad. Let me explain: any plot relies heavily on the characters. If the characters work, the movie works. Simple as that. So it's no use to say that this plot flat-out sucks, because it has its moments, even in a situation like this. And the situation is: the characters are lifeless, the plot is lifeless, and the movie falls flat on its face... But with a little more character-development, it could have been a much better movie.


Bottom line is that because of the shallow characters, the plot is bad, and even Kiefer Sutherland couldn't save this movie from hopeless mediocrity. And it's really sad, because we all know, that Kiefer Sutherland IS a lion, but all we get now is an average cliché-fest. Avoid it, if you can...

Kiefer, keep up the great work in "24"!

5/10
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5/10
Not even visually adequate
30 May 2006
First of all I'm not a fan of the comics or the first 2 films. The first two installments were OK movies, and I didn't have great expectations when I sat down to watch The Last Stand. I wanted to see a coherent story with decent characters and enjoyable action. This movie fails on all three levels (plot, characters and action)

The movie opens with a pointless scene. 20 years ago Xavier and Magneto recruited Jean Grey, but we knew that from the previous movie, the scene adds nothing new, while this third movie's main subject, is the Phoenix, which lives in her. At least they could have been throw in some foreshadowing or something, but no...

The Phoenix is an entity which is evil, and we don't know what it's capable of besides killing anybody who it comes in contact with. This is the fate of Cyclops, one of the coolest characters in the movies. His death occurs off-screen, and at the time, we have no clue, why Jean killed him. Later, we find out, that Xavier manipulated Jean's mind, and the Phoenix woke up... But we still don't know what it is exactly.

And this subplot goes on and on, we hear the name of the Phoenix numerous times, but we never really get to know, who the hell it is and what does it want. These are the obvious signs of weak storytelling.

Let's see an another subplot, the subplot of the "cure". This is some kind of chemical, which makes mutants ordinary people. The cure is in a 8 year old boy's DNA, and many people are guarding him. This situation allows the writers many possibilities to introduce interesting subplots about mutants, who see themselves as sick ordinary people and they want to be cured, and some other mutants, who want to be mutants even though there is a "cure". Yet, we don't see anything like that, just mindless shouting crowds and of course, a villain, who wants to kill or capture the boy and kill everyone who was involved in creating the cure. The emotional, philosophical and moral depth wasn't discovered in the plot. They tried it in Rogue's case, but there's nothing special in her subplot. She decides to embrace the cure and become "normal". And that's it. Nothing more. Moral dilemma before the choice? No. Just a weak attempt on Storm's side: she utters a whole sentence along the lines of "There's no need to heal". One sentence. Clever writing indeed...

My main complaint about this movie is that the characters doesn't do anything. Let's see a few of them: Storm flies into the air a couple of times and inherits Xavier's leading role after his death. But she's not able to do it convincingly.

Rogue just wants to be a human being, who can freely touch anybody. And she gets what she wanted. That's it.

Colossus is totally pointless, he throws Wolverine twice into the air and that's it. That's freakin' it...

Mystique at least pulled off a few jokes. She was funny, and when she got shot with the cure, Magneto left her alone. It was about the only character-development kinda thing in the movie.

Magneto tries to get hold of Phoenix (he succeeds), and tries to capture the boy (fails), and nothing more. Oh, he says "What have I done?" for no particular reason at the end of the movie. He killed so many people before, and when Phoenix is doing that, all of a sudden he is in shock? Ridiculous...

The Phoenix stands on the ground, and creates a great whirlwind, kills a lot of people, just because it looks cool. We don't have the slightest idea what's going on, then Wolverine manages to kill it. And with it, he kills Jean Grey also. Bad luck. We can't feel sorry for him, because we don't know, who Jean Grey was. She was given about 4 minutes of screen time. And in half of it, she wasn't even herself, but Phoenix...

I could go on and on, but I won't. The character-development is nonexistent in X-Men 3, and the action is mindless and ridiculous, but at times manages to be entertaining. And there was one character I could care about, and it was Kitty Pride, but she also became a victim of the writers of the movie: she didn't have enough screen time to trimly develop her character.

All in all it's not a bad movie, but not good either. Watch it if you want to see the special effects extravaganza at the end, which involves the flying Golden Gate Bridge (ridiculous, but nonetheless entertaining), many explosions, flying and burning cars, flying people, and Storm performing electroshock on an evil mutant. The only decent action sequence was when Juggernaut was chasing Kitty Pride. At least some clever ideas instead of "blow the whole world around the fighting characters, because it looks cool" attitude.

X-Men: The Last Stand is a good watch with friends in the theatre, but don't expect anything groundbreaking or remarkable.

5/10
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Christine (1983)
2/10
Wake up, it's not the same story!
18 May 2006
Warning: Spoilers
Christine is my all time favorite book. When I tried to watch this movie for the first time on TV, I gave up after the first five minutes. I hated the way the movie handled the relationship of the two main characters. Their dialogue exchange in the car in their first scene... It was a real disgrace. I got so angry, I actually ran away from the TV and I didn't want to see how the rest of the story was handled by the director.

That was about 4 years ago. Now, I calmed down to a level, I could watch the entire movie. And I'm angry again. But now I can handle it...

The whole movie is just a vague shadow of the story of the book. The character's names are similar, some similarities in their story here and there, but nothing serious.

1. Dennis and Arnie are reduced to two testosterone-driven jerks. WTF? In the book their relationship is so detailed, you can breath the same air they're breathing. When I read the book I was there. I was freakin' there! In the seventies! In the book, Dennis never saying anything like he says in his first scene. I won't even quote that line, it's not worth it. The entire conversation is pointless and goes nowhere. Their relationship in the movie is just lame. It doesn't justify anything that happens, and when Arnie dies, you can't feel sorry for him. You never knew him, why should you care? Why should Dennis care? Why should anybody care? In the book, the outcome of the events carried such impact, I've never read in any book ever. It's a brilliant masterpiece. In the movie there are ruins of a decent killing car horror flick. The book is not a killing car horror flick. No, it's not. The book is about growing up and having issues with yourself. None of this could make it into the movie. I would be ashamed if I filmed such a piece of garbage from this book.

2. The origin of the "spirit" in Christine. In the book everything makes perfect sense, in the movie even the simplest thing is illogical. Who bought the car originally? We meet a guy called LeBay, who had a brother, who bought the car which turned out to be a killer car, killed everybody, including the poor guy, and what does his brother do? He sells the car! Let's endanger some other people! In the book, the guy who sells it, bought it, and it's his spirit which made the car an instrument of killing, and when he is about to die, he sells the car, so his spirit can live on in it. This is basically it, but in the book it's so much more detailed, and it's simply brilliant all the way.

3. The characters doing nothing in the movie. Buddy Repperton is a villain, that's about the only OK point of the movie. Dennis isn't aware of anything, he just lays in the bed in the hospital, hardly sees Christine, hardly hears anything about "her", and despite all of this, he knows everything about "her", makes contact with Leigh, and they plan to kill "her". But it doesn't make any freakin' sense! It's totally ridiculous: Dennis never saw anything remotely suspicious about the car, he doesn't have a reason to believe it can run by itself, etc. He just says: "Ok, let's waste it!". Ludicrous!

4. There are so much more distasteful changes, and blindingly obvious plot holes in the movie, that I don't even want to go into them. There is no 4th point.

Here's what I'll do: I'll forget this movie entirely, and when I'll read the book for like the 20th time this summer, I won't remember it.

This movie shouldn't have been made.

2/10, because it's at times watchable. By no means decent, but watchable.
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Hostel (2005)
2/10
Human stupidity at its peak!
15 April 2006
I didn't expect a groundbreaking, revolutionary masterpiece of cinema, I just wanted to watch something entertaining. There is no story, so I thought it will be a style over substance movie - and it wasn't.

The creators tried desperately to convince me, that there is a story. 3 idiots going to Slovakia and getting lost one by one. I wouldn't call this a story. The filmmakers couldn't come up anything better in terms of plot, so they filled the movie with nudity and violence. But none of them could redeem this film.

Stupidity is everywhere in this movie. The way they depicted Slovakia - stupid and one-sided. The story - stupid. The characters - all stupid. The atmosphere - stupid. The dialogue - stupid. The viewer... well, you get the idea.

If I want to see human stupidity, I just walk out of my house. Don't watch this movie, it's not even entertaining. And about Slovakia... I've been there recently, and I'm still alive! Blah, it's just stupid to say something like this, right? It's exactly as stupid as to watch Hostel. I warned you.
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Date Movie (2006)
1/10
A perfect example of what's wrong with movie-making nowadays!
2 April 2006
There was a guy on the Message Board, who asked the other users, which movie he should see: this one or Walk the Line. This is the easiest question I've ever seen in my life. I haven't seen Walk the Line yet, but I plan to, and I know that it's in no way can be as bad as Date Movie.

Seriously: if you have a decent taste in comedies, you will loathe this garbage from your heart. It just repeats scenes from well known movies, and adds absolutely nothing to them; or trying to spoof a movie, and goes totally the worst way you can ever possibly imagine. This is the case with the LotR "spoof". Whoever came up with that idea, should be casted away to Mordor. Enough said.

There's no plot. There's no acting, there is no dialogue. There is no movie. What am I talking about? This movie has never been made. I'm not wasting any more words for it. Worst comedy ever. Period.

The only way you can make an even worse film is to spoof this movie. That would be 10000 times more horrible than this torture, but we would finally have a reason to drag the creators of that movie to the street and shoot them in front of a cheering crowd.

1/10
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2/10
Pointless and disturbing
2 April 2006
First of all, I have to admit, I'm not a fan of the first movie, and I never understood, what was so great about it. The first "Üvegtigris" was an OK movie with decent acting and at times great, but mostly average dialogue. Nothing special. So, I wasn't eagerly waiting for this sequel, and I didn't expect much. But what I've seen was worse than anything I could've imagined...

Amongst the basic rules of movie-making, there is a statement: a movie has to have plot. Only a few filmmakers are allowed to create a movie without it, for example David Lynch (Eraserhead), but in case of a crowd-pleaser comedy, it's essential. And this movie had absolutely no plot.

I think when the creators of this mess realized this, and started to write the dialogue, their method was: "Hey, guys, I have a great idea! Let's throw in about a million swearwords, and the audience will never ever realize, that our movie has no plot whatsoever!"... And the others definitely vividly and praisingly replied: "You're such a ****ing genius, man!" Well, let's face it: the movie is not much more than a collection of random scenes, in which a bunch of bumbling idiots saying various cusswords every once in a while. I think the crew watched the movie "Pulp Fiction", and they thought: "Hey, I can do that too!". But saying "f*ck" a bazillion times doesn't make a good movie. In Tarantino's masterpiece, every swearing was backed up by the events. In this movie, there are no events to begin with, and the cussing is therefore disturbing and even disgusting in some cases.

When this movie was released, there were raising arguments about movie downloading and copyright problems in Hungary. But it's just so STUPID to think that the audience didn't want to see this in the theaters, because they downloaded it. I have a newsflash for those people who say this: THIS MOVIE IS BAD. Don't you dare blaming the computer users for this! This is clearly the filmmakers' fault. It's ludicrous to say, that it has anything to do with downloading. Make a decent movie first, throw stones at downloaders later...

To wrap up the comment: this movie lacked everything what makes a movie a movie. It was slightly enjoyable at times, and the film brilliantly sums up, what's wrong with hungarian film-making nowadays. I say, avoid it.

2/10
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2/10
Totally uninvolving
14 November 2005
Warning: Spoilers
I'm not fan of the AitD video game series, so I didn't know, what to expect from this movie. Though, I don't know, what can prepare anybody for this horrifying experience, which some people call a "movie".

After you sat through the most boring opening sequence ever (an annoying voice reads a scrolling text for 4 minutes!), you quickly find yourself in an orphanage. Some kids are mentioned, a bad guy (or whoever) wants to do some sort of experiment (or whatever) on them. But how clever: one of them is missing. The missing child later turns out to be Edward Carnby (Slater), the main character of the video game series. And the madness won't stop until the movie ends - 85 minutes later!!! You must watch a silly action sequence, which ends with a very painful move - Slater impaled the bad guy, but not the impaling is what is painful. It's the camera work and the execution of the scene. It's more horrible than some scenes from FearDotCom, which are in my case (FearDotCom was the only movie ever, I gave a 1/10 rating) very, very serious words...

The story goes on and on, and you constantly asking yourself: "What does this bad guy want?", "What does this "Bureau 713" want?", "Who's this?", "What happened to that guy?" and finally, the most important question to ask: "Why am I watching this mess?"...

If this was not enough to turn off your TV (or in worse case: leave the theater), you can go on, but I warn you: the silliest shootout scene ever is yet to come...

So when the main characters ("characters", har-har...) are in the museum (or whatever the hell it is), some Alien-esquire monster is appearing from the middle of nowhere. Slater and his female museum curator sidekick (Reid) are running around together in the building, and suddenly - they find some guns. With their newly gained firepower, they began to shoot everywhere, except for that big monster in the middle of the room. But their massive incompetence scares away the ugly beast, and they are wandering forth. Then the scene gets more and more stupid.

It's time for the Stupidest Shootout Scene Ever to unfold before your very eyes. Some troopers are coming in and they're shooting wildly. They're shooting to the left, to the right and away from the camera. But they never hit anything. Some worms are appearing, which are apparently crawling into someone's spine and turning them into zombies. Sounds silly? Yes. Does it look silly in the movie? No, it looks much sillier.

So, we have this bunch of incompetent troops who are incapable of hitting anything, we have the two main heroes, and a few monsters. And you cannot care about them! You don't even know, why they're there where they are, you don't even know, what are they doing. And on top of it: they're in the middle of an action scene, which supposed to be entertaining. And it's not. This is the Stupidest Shootout Scene Ever, and you have to watch it to believe it. I couldn't describe this visual torture properly. But if I could, you would be roaring in pain...

Slater and Reid survived the shootout - me too...

Our heroes then have a pointless meeting with the main bad guy (who wants to command the creatures of the dark, because... umm... I think, even the scriptwriter doesn't know, why...), and all of a sudden, the main characters decide to climb out from the catacomb (or whatever place they were before), and they began walking in the evacuated city. Yes indeed, the evacuated city. But asking questions about it, is pointless, as you guessed correctly. Why was the city evacuated? Irrelevant. When was it evacuated? Irrelevant. It's evacuated. Period.

So our heroes are moving on, approaching an open street. They began walking away from the camera, and Slater utters some silly closing words which are, as the movie itself, totally irrelevant and pointless. And the movie ends with a creature jumping on them in the middle of the day. A creature, which supposed to be living in darkness. But don't worry: this was the movie's last ridiculous move, here comes the ending credits. And they are brilliant! Nothing is wrong with this brilliant last scene!...

The only reason why I don't give it a 1, are the special effects. They were sometimes convincing. The scene, which surrounded them was silly, but the effects, when the monsters vanished were decent.

So I gave it 2/10. And it could have been 5/10, if I could care about the characters. But I've never seen a movie in my entire life which could be this uninvolving (except FearDotCom of course).

I say: avoid at all costs. Don't waste 90 minutes from your life on this, go watch another movie. Pick a David Lynch or a Tarantino, but leave this movie Alone in the Dark. It deserves it.
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The Pacifier (2005)
7/10
Not pure genius, but surprisingly entertaining
8 June 2005
Warning: Spoilers
When I decided to watch this movie, I expected a silly, not really convincing comedy with lame jokes. I thought, that the movie wants to capitalize on Vin Diesel. And he was almost the only thing why I watched The Pacifier. And I was disappointed... in a positive way.

Vin Diesel is awesome. After the brilliant Chronicles of Riddick (8/10) we get a comedy with him. And he is funny! Of course, the movie has its serious moments, when it's trying to deliver a message to the viewers, but it's OK - all of this scenes are saved by Vin Diesel. The Peter Panda dance is hilarious, so the movie works very well.

On the other hand, it has some tasteless jokes (I cannot and will not laugh when someone is farting) and let's face it: it's a simple family movie. It does deliver some messages, but it's done in a traditional way. So nothing special about it.

SPOILER

There is a scene, when Zoe is crying, because she misses her father so much. The chemistry between the two in that scene is believable (so, the movie works again). That is the best scene of the movie. Zoe simply says: "You were right about him" - referring to her (ex-)boyfriend. This line represents the fact, that Zoe could develop a new view in herself. How many of us could do something like that when we are in a situation like this? Zoe is strong, and this is the message that the movie tries to deliver: we have to find the strength in ourselves, no matter what happens to us or to someone we love.

END OF SPOILER

The movie is perfect in every way in its genre. However, I didn't like some jokes (which were on the tasteless side), the atmosphere isn't right in some of the scenes, and I'm not so into the genre anyway (I prefer deeper movies, such as Groundhog Day or Memento). So I gave it a 7.

If you like Vin Diesel, don't miss it! You'll be surprised! The guy can make comedy! He became one of my favorite actors with this movie.

Keep it up, Vin! 7/10
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Feardotcom (2002)
1/10
What a horrendous waste of precious celluloid!
9 March 2005
Warning: Spoilers
SPOILER FREE COMMENT! (though I don't think that there's anything to spoil here...)

I really don't know, how could I force myself not to turn this movie off after the first 20 minutes or so. In the first 1-2 minutes, I was hopeful, i thought, that it can't be a bad movie, because it has Udo Kier in it! My god, how wrong I was...

When the movie reached the 20 minutes mark, I was so desperate, that I've never been in my life. By then, it was pretty obvious, that this is a bad movie. It wasn't like that, when a movie seems good at the start but goes downhill later; no. It was bad from the beginning to the end.

There is no story. There is no acting. There is no direction. Character-development? Did you see any characters in this movie? Or can I even write down the word "movie" regarding this cinematic torture? I think, not. I won't. Moreover, I won't write anything more about this awful piece of film-making (Hmm... where did I see film-making in this? I really need to stop writing this comment, before I write some more ridiculous stuff. "Filmmaking", holy jeez...).

IMDb's lowest rating is "awful". This word hardly represents the suffering you go through watching FearDotCom. This is the only movie I rated 1 on this site, and when the credits started rolling, I immediately put this movie into the AAAC-category. What does AAAC mean?

AVOID AT ALL COST!!!

1/10
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4/10
Calling it an Alien or a Predator movie is ridiculous
16 February 2005
(First part of the comment: viewed as an Alien or Predator movie)

Who on Earth thought that the events of the movie must be placed on Earth? Although, we can hardly speak about "events" in this ridiculous cinematic disaster...

Let's think about this: the Predators ruled the ancient Aztecs and some other ancient civilizations, they were returning periodically and organized great huntfests each time. BUT, in the first Alien, the Nostromo's crew doesn't know, what the hell is this acid-blooded, double-jawed killing machine they must deal with. So, if they are placing the AvP movie to the Earth and still no one has a clue about Aliens, what then? One can expect, that there will be no human survivors. But there IS one - but presumably she will not make it or no one will ever believe her.

That's the point. Such pointless situations in other movies have meanings or artistic values. But pronouncing a sentence, which contains the term "artistic value" regarding this movie is an insane act, which should be punished by the law...

So much for the "plot" or "script" of this movie, let's see the action. At first sight I went: "Oh my, it's PG-13, what will Aliens and Predators do in the movie? Will they play chess? Will they bring flowers to each other or what? It's PG-13, for chrissakes!" And this can be seen in every action scene in the movie

The Aliens are represented nowhere near as dangerous and threatening as in the previous 4 movies. Their movements are so corny, and the atmosphere during the scenes just doesn't fit. They are just like the other movie monsters - not that outstanding, well thought-out creatures, like they were in the Alien movies. The Predators... although, I always liked the Aliens better, but I must admit, that I realized too, that the Preds were so damn pitiful. They were like "We are the Predators with capital P, so get out of our way, even if you are an acid-blooded killing machine. Oh, you won't? Well, then we must fight with them, guys. Oh, it's a pity, I would rather watch TV..." I mean, how on Earth could they make the Preds so out of character? They are HUNTERS, they have a codex of honor, for crying out loud, they shouldn't have been represented like pompous, self-loving morons...

As for the back-story and the "ideas" in the "script": "Let's chain down the Queen! Oooops, some of the other Aliens can spit acid on the handcuffs, and it's melting, because we couldn't make them acid-proof, while our spears are made of acid-proof material! That's how clever we are!" - or maybe they wanted the Queen to escape, but the escape-scene supposed to be a significant event in the movie, and it failed miserably.

All in all: this movie is an insult for all Alien and Predator fans.

(Second part: viewed as stand-alone movie)

It's a decent movie, it has some action and a rather stupid story which is a lame excuse to bring the Preds and Aliens together. But it's watchable, so I give it a 6/10.

(Third part: a little explanation)

Finally I gave a 6/10 to the movie. You may watching this comment through the "Loved It" filter, because I gave a 6, and 6 is bigger than 5.4 (which is the movie's current rating). But I have to say, that I didn't "love it", because I'm a fan of the first two Alien and both of the Predator movies, and I had to watch it as an Alien or Predator movie. Then, after the movie ended, I thought, that "Well, maybe it ruined the reputation of Aliens and Preds, but viewed as a stand-alone movie, it's waaaay better than for example Queen of the Damned, which was so boring and tedious, and it's nowhere near as stupid as League of Extraordinary Gentlemen."

That's why I gave the movie 6/10, and not because I loved it - do not think that for a single moment!
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Commando (1985)
7/10
An absolute classic (mild SPOILERS)
17 November 2004
This movie has a very complicated plot. The story is about a retired philosopher, John Matrix (Arnold Schwarzenegger), who is currently living a pleasant life with his daughter. One day, Albert Einstein comes along and opens a wormhole into the year 1999 (they were in 1985 before). Matrix and his daughter then watches a movie, from that year, which is called "The Matrix". And from now on, the movie shows us their philosophical discussion about the main question: "What is the Matrix?"

OK, just kidding. Philosophy isn't involved in this movie at all, nor Albert Einstein, and the only discussion between Matrix and his daughter is about Boy George's gender...

The plot is simple: the bad guys are kidnapping Matrix's daughter and Arnie kills every single one of them himself. Some of them are getting impaled, some of them are simply gunned down by the hero. In today's movies, heroes trying to outsmart the baddies, but Arnold has a better idea: he decides, he would rather go on a killing spree, and so the fun begins. Explosions, guns, guns, guns, hand grenades, guns, guns, machine guns, guns, guns, a bulldozer, guns, guns, a rocket launcher, guns, guns, guns and even a fork comes into play.

WARNING!!! Do not expect plot twists or mind-bending conclusions! It's not "The Sixth sense" or anything like that. It's an Arnold movie, but not a "Total recall". It hasn't got any political, moral or whatever lesson to teach the audience, it has mindless action and unbelievably corny one-liners.

There's one scene in the movie, when one of the bad guys explains the situation to Arnie: he must cooperate, because they have his daughter. Nowadays, an action movie hero would drop his gun and cooperate. But hey, this movie was made in 1985, so Arnold's reply cannot be anything else than shooting the guy in the face...

One of the most memorable moments in this movie (for me) is when Arnie is single-handedly shooting with a machine gun. In Counter-Strike, your character can barely WALK with that gun, but in the movie, Arnie is jumping, crouching and running with it. Amazing! This is why he doesn't appear in this movie as a brain surgeon...

These are the reasons, why you have to check your brain at the door, sit back and relax. Enjoy the movie, because it's fun!!!

And in case I didn't mention it before, this is a classic...

7/10
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4/10
James Cameron, where are you?
2 October 2004
After the excellent Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgment Day, we have a trilogy now, which is not necessarily a bad thing. But unfortunately, the third installment couldn't live up to my expectations after the first two genuine pieces of cinema.

In the first part, Arnold was the menacing, unstoppable and relentless killing machine. In the second, Arnold was a protagonist. It's a very good idea from Cameron. Let's see if he can make a good performance on the good side. And he could!

What we get from the third movie is having Arnold again as a protagonist, even the same model which he was in T2. Nothing new... But at least it's nice to see him again in his best role.

The antagonist is now a female terminator (it's just me, or the name "Terminatrix" is really cheesy?), which is a good idea. Or at least something new. Kristanna Loken is indeed beautiful and her performance is good - but sadly just "good", and not "awesome" or "genuine" as Robert Patrick's in T2. RP was waaaay better.

The story was written in a "Come on guys, we HAVE to figure out something to make a new Terminator movie" way. Judgment Day was only delayed? Give me a break! This destroys the whole story of T2, and doesn't offer anything in order to justify this act. So this is rather pointless.

The characters are much worse than they were in the previous movies. Kyle Reese was a totally understandable character, someone that the viewer could care about and he was played by Michael Biehn. Sarah Connor was also a character like this in the second - and they killed off her in this. So, we have a new character, Kate Brewster (Claire Danes), who seems like a ripoff of Sarah. She merges the SC from the first with the SC from the second installment. Nice performance from Danes, but this isn't enough to make the movie good. We have of course John Connor - but the character is completely out of place.

The action sequences were breathtaking in the first and especially in the second movie (T2 has the most breathtaking CGI I've ever seen). Now, we've got a car chase with a giant truck (does anybody have déja vu?), lots of bullets, some wrestling and giant explosions. It was done before, nothing new! Only the "hook into the manhole" scene was memorable (the CGI used in that scene was made by hungarians!), but the other parts of the car chase were simply boring. What do we see? Shaking camera, cars going off-road, and this goes on for minutes... The car chase scene in The Matrix Reloaded is way better than this one. The wrestling between the two Terminators were good, however the Burly Brawl in M:R is better - moreover, it's slightly disturbing to see Arnold constantly beating a girl...

All in all the movie deserves a 7, because it's entertaining and fun to watch Arnold again (I liked the gay glasses scene...). But apart from this, it's mindless and not even visually adequate enough.

I'm not counting "T3: Rise of the Machines" as a Terminator movie. The Terminator saga ends with the closing sequence of "T2: Judgment Day" for me.
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10/10
touching, emotional, original and hilarious masterpiece
24 April 2004
I only watched it on DVD, but I wish I was at the theater, when Monsters, Inc. was released. Anyway, I was blown away. Sometimes I was rolling on the ground while laughing, sometimes I couldn't hold back my tears. Simply amazing, marvellous filmmaking.

The animation is picture-perfect, the dialogue is brilliant, the story is truly original. Pixar's finest, I think, it's way better than Finding Nemo. A cinematic masterpiece, which is full of emotions and laughter. If you haven't seen it yet, then GO, RENT IT! You won't be disappointed, I guarantee it.

Boo is the cutest animation movie character EVER.

An obvious 10/10
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