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Reviews
Lucky Number Slevin (2006)
Take the time to edit out about 20 minutes of this movie, and we have a winner!
Just saw this last night, and as they revealed the :noes:athon, my rating of the movie just kept falling and falling.
Too much of the movie was about the actual truth, and there wasn't enough setup. The Usual Suspects was an AWESOME movie because Verbal's story led us along for the two hours, and then in less than a minute, the truth unraveled. The longer they drew out the "shock," it just got less and less shocking. The effect kept getting diluted until I just didn't care.
Also, a big aspect in any story is the romance. It's either a part of the background, or a big driving force. In this film, what was it? It started off as a background romance, but then at the end they try to make Hartnett and Liu's romance important. And then they kind of got lazy and let the pen go off wherever kind of like how I'm doing because the movie bad something something.
It started off OK, but there were so many times when we were made to suspend disbelief (while being aware of how contrived the situation is), or told to look left when we knew something was going to happen on the right, that a film with some solid strengths just became bogged down in the weaknesses.
10 Items or Less (2006)
My search for a clever title was in vain, just like this show trying to find laughs.
If I were to venture a guess, TBS spent most of its budget on My Boys and when the numbers came in lower than expected, they spent the surplus money on this cheap The Office knockoff. I don't know if the producers were drunk or deluded, but contrary to their belief, rewriting The Office in a grocery store and making it louder doesn't make it funny. The failure Leslie is a transparent rewrite of Michael Scott, a failure trying to succeed in a field he is totally unqualified for that grasps for the approval of those around him. The high school crush of his trying to buy out his store is an equally unoriginal Jan Levinson, the scion of "Corporate", coming down to give him a hard time. And is it any surprise that their relationship is a pathetic one-sided affair? The supporting cast is a trashy group of lower-class failures that love to stand around like idiots and live disgusting lives. Not one of them is close to grabbing sympathy from an audience. Every punchline is a blunt, obvious comment void of any comedic value, suggesting the writers had up to a whole hour to finish the episode. Obvious punchlines and despicable characters may work for Adult Swim's collection of poorly drawn and incoherent plot driven cartoons, but fails miserably for this TBS reject.
Nuit et brouillard (1956)
Haunting
There is no other film quite like Night and Fog. It is only about a half hour long, and unlike many other Holocaust films, there are no characters. However, the short time used by the film is all it takes to be hit. I have read plenty of books, watched movies, seen History Channel documentaries, but this film was twice as much of an impact as all the others combined. This is the definitive film on the Holocaust. One of the first, and will remain on the best. It is not suitable for younger audiences. Even as a college student, with all the violent movies out there, it was very disturbing to say the least. But there is no other film out there that will stay with you like Night and Fog.