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mad_elaine
Reviews
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006)
wretched, worthless waste of your time
For a sequel to a basically fun and swashbuckling first offering, this one is completely UNfunny, aggressively puerile and offensive, disjointed and confusing in its direction, and has nothing at all to offer but gross-out scenes and a tired parade of pirate-movie clichés. Five year olds could have come up with a more cohesive and entertaining script, and certainly could have written something less disgusting. A hodgepodge of gratuitous scenes that can't distract the viewer away from the fact that they have yet to be given any reason to care about any of these characters or events. NO humor whatsoever, and for something so poorly glued together, it takes itself way too seriously. The first one didn't even try to be serious, knowing everything was silly fantasy, but the tone this one tries to keep is that this is actually straightforward and not tongue-in-cheek! As it jumps abruptly from one ludicrous scene to another, it fails to make any sense or entice the viewer. Constipated overacting, ham fisted direction, and if it has a plot, you won't see any sign of it for a good long time. My husband and I walked out after a totally unpleasant half hour and got a refund. Don't waste two hours of your life. This is the typical sequel scenario, where they KNOW most everyone who saw the first will see the second, so they don't even bother trying to make it good. I used to have respect for Johnny Depp, but I guess he was either contractually obligated to do a sequel, or just sold out for a buck. He's not really the problem here; it's the lousy writing and direction.
Do lok tin si (1995)
what the detractors are missing about this film
The following was excerpted from a wonderful essay by Momus, and nicely highlights the themes that this film is all about (which are totally missed by the complainers here who called it boring).
"Isolated, impulsive heroes, nocturnal locations, cool music... a violent world in which sensitive people nevertheless continue to dream romantic dreams indifferent to the surrounding carnage.
In 'Fallen Angels' this happens quite literally: Agent girl Michelle Reis moons and munches dreamily in the wideangle foreground while in the background a triad fight happens in slow motion.
It's the Walkman syndrome, a thing you notice when you visit the orient. The bigger the population, the more busy the city, the more people develop the ability to retreat into an inner isolation, the space of a snackbar, a tatami mat, a computer screen, a song playing on headphones.
In the next century we will all live like this.
Wong Kar Wei maps out a perfectly postmodern, perfectly oriental psychogeography of small, busy places which nevertheless become the spawning ground of ultra-private obsessions and infatuations. Love in his films is more likely to be expressed by someone breaking into your apartment and tidying it, or by masturbation, than a healthy clinch. It is the mindset of ultrafetish, and cinematographer Chris Doyle puts it into images: a clear plastic sheath worn over a Chinese silk dress, a mute riding the corpse of a pig in an abattoir, a blow up sex doll with its head stuck in an elevator door, being kicked insanely by a couple of ultra-romantic maniacs.
And there is the real star, the traum-city itself. Corridors, subways, neon, time lapse, travelators and low flying jets, trains, shopping arcades, Chung King Mansions stuffed to the gullets with sullen, sweating people cooled by antique electric fans, the scheming tattooed triads, outbursts of random violence, warehouses, chopping knives, video cameras, motorbikes speeding through tunnels, the multi-racial hand in hand with the super-commercial... Hong Kong insinuates itself into our imaginations as the ubertraumstadt, the place of ultimate nightmare and ultimate romance, where beauty is all the more poignant for its dark, cheap, pitiless setting and dreams are all the more necessary."
A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001)
Disappointed at such a waste of talents
Spielberg really proved his fallibility with this under-edited mish-mash of ideas. Were this a work of a novice director I would be just as incensed at wasting eight bucks to see a film so poorly written, but from an experienced director its all the more insulting. And mystifying. The central problem here is the film can never quite figure out its target audience. The first half is an intelligent, thought-provoking treatment geared towards adults and succeeds as a movie rather well. Then it takes an abrupt turn into territory so ridiculous, juvenile, and childish that it would take an infant's mind to be moved by or interested in such Disney-esque material. (Disneyish in its fanciful, nonrealistic themes, but without the quality or ageless appeal of some Disney works.) And in all honesty most children would probably still see through and be insulted by the relentless manipulation tactics! Nor would even they likely care about these bizarre and wholly unnecessary plot "developments" (one ending after another, tacked on and on for no imaginable purpose, each worse than the last!)
I LIKE (no, often LOVE) many very long films. And I love complex, disturbing, thought-provoking or controversial ones that truly challenge the audience and demand a certain level of intelligence to fully appreciate. Problem is, THIS WASN'T ONE OF THOSE! Its just a uncongealed mess of too many ideas on the many ways this premise could be handled. And then every one was went with. And none of it was edited out.
*Spoiler alert!!*
What the heck was the deal with the whole ending bit with the one final day with his mom? Not only was this plot-wise a complete sellout for the rest of the film (Spielberg just HAD to slap on a 'happy ending'), but am I the only one who found its treatment and handling to be EXTREMELY DISTURBING?! It all just emphasized the already present (if a bit understated to that point) truly bizarre, unsettling tone that Sigmund Freud would definitely have had a field day with! Suddenly it felt more like a creepy remake of Psycho, with the audience expected to cheer the "wonderfully warm and beautiful" relationship of Haley Joel Osment's 'Norman Bates' to his mother! It was utterly creepy, rather nauseating, and unbelievably ham-handed/over-done in execution at that! I mean I felt like at any moment some gross incestuous love scene was about to erupt! Speilberg was just trying to portray a healthy mother-sun relationship but failed miserably and just gave me the creeps!
Just a few of a thousand plot-holes and complaints: I guess aliens from a distant galaxy 2000 years from now will, oddly enough, be speaking with British accents! Who knew.
Amazing that in 2 millennia of being underwater or frozen solid, not a single diode or bit of circuitry would malfunction or experience the slightest damage. Wow, they really build those Mecha to last!
For an "outdated" SuperToy that Teddy sure got given a better set of programs for intelligence, processing info, understanding the world, morality, etc! Lucky for David he has him to follow around.
Was a gratuitous trip to Vegas-y Sleaze-City really necessary? Its not that it was offensive, just stupid. And in the same film that goes all Jiminy Cricket-y in a whole fanciful, juvenile, fairy tale ending? (Seems the flashy effects were the only point of this part. And effects are no substitute for a plausible, intelligent plotline!) Ditto for the gratuitously violent WCW-style Flesh Fair scene. At least that was important to the plot, and believable (unfortunately, all too much so.)
Many reviewers seem to miss the point of David's attempted suicide. (Where the whole thing should rightfully have ended!!) It was ultimately not out of grief, but an act of selflessness because unless he destroyed himself and proved his technology (his unique love-program) to be an utter failure, it would be installed in the helpless myriad Davids and Darlenes -- his 'sibling' bots all doomed to go through his unquenchable pain at not receiving the love of their parents.
Or at least thats what he could have presented it more clearly as. But no, Spielberg (or Kubrick) preferred to toss that aside by having David mope "mommy" yet one more repetitive time and then write himself into a corner so badly it took 2000 years and some aliens to come along and help him out (by making it go absurd!)
If he did have to keep going after the leap, he should have had David be smashed by the falling ferris wheel and put out of his misery. Or the whole ridiculous Blue Fairy element left out altogether!! What a waste of the undeniable acting talents of Osment and Law (totally undeveloped character!). And of the audience's time!