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if you wish to contact me to debate or discuss something use the pm system...i don't really care to post much.
Reviews
Swimfan (2002)
not as bad as the rating is...
i don't really write reviews anymore, but i want to say a few words to defend this movie. swimfan is for a teen-movie a good case. look at teen movies like road-trip etc., this movie is much better. it's a remake, it's not a masterpiece, yeah, yeah, well it isn't the worst movie in history either. the rating is almost the same as precious find's, if you tell me that precious find is even close to swimfan, boy you're messed up. when you start bashing a movie, remember the scale you're rating with. if you give a 1 to every movie you dislike and a 10 to every movie you like you have misunderstood something about rating movies here.
After the Storm (2001)
what can i say, a b-movie
...and an incredibly bad one, as well. i've never read hemingway, so i don't know weather this is faithful or whatever, but i couldn't get on the mood.
benjamin bratt bouncing around as the macho 'hero' is ridiculously poor.
this man shouldn't be allowed to pretend being an actor. you live in denial, benji! armand assante and simone-elise girard do a better job, but there was nothing they could've done to save this miserable excuse for a movie. and, realistically, they are also quite mediocre actors, they just seem fine in this one considering the level of competition.
the director tries to be all clever twisting and turning the events and trying to create a paranoid feel, but hey, when you can't do it, you just can't! the plot in it's childisness and predictability is so stupid it's not even funny. i suggest considering going back to your day job. (i had a hard time not to curse here)
the studio must be happy to see the crew spend all the money having a nice little holiday somewhere in caribia, as the only thing i saw money spent on was the camera filter that made the movie look more expensive than it actually was. the jazzy music is annoying and unfitting, aand naturally the dialogue is on a 'me tarzan, you jane'-level.
if you, after wathing 'after the storm' and 'wild things' still say mamet's movies suck i can't help you. you need serious treatment.
1/10
Where the Heart Is (2000)
surprisingly good, actually
novalee nation. what a great character name. and they don't forget to brag about it, either. but i accept, in this case.
the movie starts out in an interesting and surprising fashion. natalie portman, the centerfold of teenage magazines and star of mega-star from star wars is pregnant, shy, not-so-cute white trash. ok, you got my attention. now what. the girl lives and has a baby in a wal-mart! completely unbelievable but so what! i found it hilarious. unfortunately the rest of the movie can't keep up quite the same level. ashley judd as novalee's friend acts fine, and the others aren't that bad either. too bad novalee's character turns to the 'real life natalie portman' and loses my interest in her (although she prolly wouldn't give a damn :p). i wish to make it clear, that i don't know natalie personally so keep the peas out of your noise for now.
the ending is sadly the typical stuff, but the interesting dialogue is preserved throughout the movie. the start is the best, but there are some good moments later and some more serious discussion as well. if there was music in the film, it must have been as totally average as as totally i also forgot about it approximately two seconds after the movie.
4/10 though, since it isn't a completely satisfying creation...much like 'silkwood (1983)' it goes downhill all the time towards the end.
I Dreamed of Africa (2000)
...and the point was???
follow your mother advice, stay home and never do anything daring, exciting or new. that's the message i got from 'i dreamed of africa'. twice kuki's mother tells her how it is, kuki doesn't obey and loved ones start dropping like flies. so the movie seemed to reverse it's premise completely.
and furthermore, there's nothing really interesting going on in africa, unless you like seeing pointless deaths and lots of crying after. the acting is, really, just awful. the supposedly italian pair sound more like danish, and why the heck are they talking english in italy, if the director has gone through the trouble of having the african natives speak their own language? it's beyond comprehension.
the deaths make this movie a very depressing one, and the promised 'great shots from africa, just like you were there' are completely missing. i must tell you, i don't really understand the bit about the illegal hunting either. the man, paolo or whatever is going hunting or fishing all the time, so it's not really an ethical point for him...then what is it? maybe somebody would like to explain it to me. but for sure, even if you were hunting to eat, you don't have to spend your entire living hours to do so, do you? the man is obviously obsessed with guns, and teaches a small kid to use a gun as well.
the plot is childisly predictable. 'oh, oh, now the kid goes to play with the poisonous snakes after his mother just warned him about it! i WONDER what's going to happen.' the dialogue is dull, and there is zero character developement for some side roles that might have saved at least a bit of the movie, for example daniel craig and lance reddick are completely ignored and wasted.
'i dreamed of africa' is a boring and just an incredibly naive, shallow, depressing and stupid movie.
1/10
Orange County (2002)
'wonder boys' stuck in 'american pie'
this movie sure gave me a bunch of laughs. primarily caused by it's hilarious self-pretence in a sad attempt of being 'deep'. the movie can't seem to decide weather it's a movie for teens with brains included or not. for intelligent teens orange county features too much pee pee poo poo humour, and a plot way too simple, and the brainless model probably doesn't get it. luckily jack black's character does drugs and the two surfer guys are also there to keep the giant of mind interested.
techically speaking the movie is only mediocre despite the odd few better-looking shots. same words could be used to describe the directing. the dialogue isn't great, and the soundtrack is awful.
with time it becomes clearer and clearer to the viewer that that the only thing that holds it self together throughout the movie is the acting work. all of the actors fit in the movie fine, even the 'cameos' this time. the female actors schuyler fisk and catherine o'hara are stealing the show, great work. o'hara and lithgow are trying to pull an 'american beauty', o'hara is great but lithgow's no kevin spacey let me tell you.
as i said, the movie misses it's target audience nicely by trying to be witty and unwitty at the same time. i guess fans of old-time comedy (animal house, the graduate etc.) may find some nice references and stuff here, but personally i couldn't care less, i'd rather just watch those films instead.
great cast, dumb film.
3/10
Queen of the Damned (2002)
mtv vampires
well, at least you know what you're getting when you rent a film like this. i would never i say never rent 'queen of the damned'-type of film if i was to see one in the rental. lucky me though. i have some friends who like to wallow in this kind of nonsense. so, friday night i got to see not only this, but ali g and road trip as well. qotd actually seemed quite good that night.
aaliyah's performance is so undescribable, i couldn't believe what i was seeing. the rest of the cast is decent though, but still they're nothing more than mass-teen all-looks no-skills. except for lena olin, but her role is pointless and irrelevant. the forced grafting of mass-teen music to the film, even adding it to 'fit the plot' is an outstandingly moronic idea. i wonder what kind of jokers made this film. 'cause you have just gotta to be kidding me.
1/10
Silkwood (1983)
starts out fine turning worse every minute
the story behind silkwood is possibly an interesting one, which i will investigate further after writing the review. for now i would say the script seems even more interesting than the story behind it, but regardless of the star cavalcade they somehow managed to ruin it.
meryl streep does her 'bad girl' thing here, the character you can also spot from 'marvin's daughters' and shows once again that her character definitions are well crafted and practiced but unimaginative. kurt russell has been given a character that's too interesting to be played by kurt russell, and who knows what cher is doing in this movie. the factory doesn't really seem evil, infact the whole setting of the movie appears almost as if you were watching a dramatized documentary about the subject. seems and feels like a tv-movie dispite the stars in the main roles.
i'm not even going start with the overblown ending scenes...give me a break. the ole' bucket became useful again.
in conclusion it all could've been made so much better, an interesting subject with interesting characters but a mediocre movie. but then, it all fits if you watch mike nichols' career going \ from virginia woolf to primary colors you can find silkwood exactly in the middle. still worth a watch if it happens to be on tv.
4/10
The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988)
ha-haa a good adventure keeps one young!
jolene blalock said; 'i like men who are so brilliant they are almost insane'. well i couldn't agree more. in a completely heterosexual way. :-)
terry gilliam is the best movie director i know. i dare to say this because the fact is he takes on projects no other director even daydreams about taking. munchausen is another impossible movie made possible. now who could have made it other than terry? who would have wanted to make it? i can't name anyone, can you? gilliam has guts, and he is quite insane, i don't even want to begin to think what he would be doing if he wasn't making films. his films are with no exception flawed, the uk films suffered from lousy settings and poor screenplay, and the 90's films are...well, hollywood, even if they are true gilliam films. i have yet to give a perfect ten to a gilliam movie, but i still think he's the greatest director ever lived. he has something the others don't. that's good old fashioned imagination.
munchausen strikes back exactly when the star trek-boom is at it's highest. everybody's talking about the new possibilities in science, and religions all over the world are losing good fat-pocketed customers. a perfect time for this sort of movie. the adventures of baron munchausen remind us all that life is an adventure, nothing that is written is some book is the absolute truth, you make your own truth, and life can be a wonderful experience. i have always had a thing for adventure movies, and films like this always give me a good mood.
john neville does a splendid job as the baron, i almost applaused at his magnificent performance during the movie. too bad most of the cast does a poor job. or, even more likely, the screenplay sucks. munchausen looks and feels like a b-movie, so little money was apparently at use, but gilliam's vision and neville's acting is what drives it on. the good twist in the end doesn't hurt either. it's still a mediocre movie technically, but it's just so amazing you have to see it if you love a good adventure.
IF again you want a mind-numbing thriller where ben affleck and morgan freeman chase the bad guys and you know exactly what's going to happen even before sitting down for the screen, IF your primary interest in movies is to get to eat a lot of popcorns and/or make out with your girlfriend, then don't rent this movie!!! you wouldn't understand any of it.
6/10 (and thumbs up to neville)
Great Expectations (1974)
sleeping pill
before seeing this film, the 1998 version was my only experience of this dickens story. i didn't enjoy that film very much, but this 1974 adaptation moves on in a particulary tiresome fashion.
the actors don't shine, the main couple michael york and sarah miles are especially wooden cases. the only character of real interest for me was anthony quayle's intelligent jaggers.
the so called plot is ridiculous, but the story itself is a great one. it's a real lesson on how your distorted values and obsessive principles can destroy you. live with an open mind and don't care what other people say, you are what you are, if others can't take it, **** 'em. pip was told this early on, but he didn't listen.
the girl adopted by the weird old lady reminded me a little of the old kaspar hauser story, not in that same horrible level, but in the way she molded the child to create the executor of her personal vendetta against the entire opposite sex she thought had deceived her. pip's childhood didn't appear much better. the ending didn't seem to fit the rest of the story's style. the sets looked cheap, and coming to imdb i'm not surprised to see that this was indeed a tv-movie (which i had no idea of when i borrowed it from the library).
live and learn. so many good movies, so little time. that's why the reviews are here. so YOU wouldn't have to waste your time on this sort of movies.
3/10
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958)
what is love?
this movie was nothing what i expected, and i'm saying it as a good thing.
cat on a hot tin roof is basically a study about what love is and means for different types of people, and how they project it through their behaviour.
the acting work is good. burl ives and madeleine sherwood are excellent, paul newman isn't bad either as the drunken martyr. only liz taylor appears to be in the wrong place somehow with her glamour look. the most powerful scenes in the movie come from the verbal battle of two strong individuals burl ives and paul newman, playing father and son.
this type of a film was surely ahead of it's time. if you look at the studied issues of the movie they are valid in todays society. it's just remarkable that a movie like this got produced in 1958. i'm glad it did though, i enjoyed watching it and i know a few people whom it might do some good to take a look of it as well...
if the acting work of ives, sherwood and newman did convince me, the repeating scenes with melodramatic speeches didn't, the apparent crying for academy's attention was particularly disgusting to watch.
if you ignore the traces of a style of an era, you can freely marvel at the beginning of a new, more open one. we humans still have a lot to learn about love, i'd like to believe some day we will realize how important it is to love one another AND show it.
It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963)
it's a bad bad bad bad movie
the only scenes of slight interest were the ones with jerry lewis' and buster keaton's short cameos, and the airplane pilot saying 'it's the only way to fly'. obviously big money has been spent on the special effects and wrecked stuff, and some of the chase scenes were actually rather impressive.
other than that, this movie was just repulsive. i've never liked 'crazy-comedy' and i wont most certainly start today. 'it's a mad mad mad mad world' is 2½ hours of zero-brainer yelling forcing you to grab some aspirin in the intermission if you intend to watch it all the way. 'great cast' is truly irritating, everybody except for tracy is horribly overacting...oh my poor head is still hurting, i can't write much longer.
the plot is extremely simple, so simple and predictable it's just...aargh! it's just stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid.
2/10