Change Your Image
arouet
Reviews
The Italian Job (2003)
Paying to see this should be a crime
Critics these days seem to give good reviews if only part of a movie is entertaining instead of the whole picture. This seems to be the case with this. This picture is rewarded for half-working and it reveals the terrible state of movie-making today. The first 45 minutes are entertaining but then we are insulted with the most ludicrous and unbelieveable plot twists you can think of. It is time for people to say that is simply not good enough.
This movie insults you with the most banal wrap-up in memory- cliches are thrown at you at a dizzy pace because the writers are just too lazy or don't care enough to think of something more plausible. At the end of the picture, you are not even sure what planet this caper takes place on. It is certainly not Earth. Sorry, someone needs to tell the writers you cannot control traffic or subways from a computer hacker. You would think the writers had never even been to Los Angeles by the way they portray it.
This had potential, but it was washed away by an impossible ending that destroys the entire picture.
The Dancer Upstairs (2002)
Painfully slow and predictable
This movie has a good look and good dialogue, but the plot sinks it. It just never goes anywhere and there is not one surprise in the entire movie. Certainly, it tries to be intelligent with references to Kant and political ideas, but that is not enough to save it from mediocrity.
It is advertised as a tense thriller, yet there is nothing thrilling about it at all. If anything, it is a botched romantic drama. It unexpectedly falls apart in the last 15 minutes with strange behavior by the lead that is hard to explain, much less fathom. If you are looking for any sort of twist, don't waste your time- it never comes. Everything here is precisely as it seems.
I'm amazed Malkovitch is involved in this. Perhaps on paper, it works better than on screen. At any rate, it's the plot drags it down. Malkovtich needs to look for a better screenwriter.
Left Behind II: Tribulation Force (2002)
Insulting and Unintentionally funny
This movie fails on a number of levels. As it can be viewed on strictly religious terms or as an action thriller, I will address both.
First, let's just talk about it terms of an thriller film. It fails in this regard because it simply makes no sense. People don't act in any sort of real manner. It's simply not how people would act if this were a real situation of millions of people vanishing. You would think the Bible is some book that was only known to the people who vanished and no one else. Everyone else seems to be completely in the dark and don't even make the connection this might be the "Rapture," yet, millions of Christians vanish overnight as Christians have been saying they will. I don't know about you, but if that happens in real life, me and most of the planet would be rushing to Church the next morning. It seems implausible no one would. Also, everyone goes about their business as if some mugging happened in the neighborhood. The most ridiculous thing is that most people accept the disappearance as some sort of nuclear radiation when that is the most insane excuse that could be even offered. This film is incredibly outdated, a complete fabrication of how and what the U.N. is and how it works. Acting and dialogue are unintentionally hilarious, setting off streams and fits of laughter. In one Church scene, there is a bulletin board and six pictures of people on it with the caption, "OUR MISSING" A Church and there is only six missing people? How funny is that? What was it, The Church of Satan? There's no surprises and no tension, especially among the people who are not saved and whom you know will be calling out for Jesus by the end of the picture. There's a lot of talk about the "Wailing Wall," yet what is supposed to be the wailing wall, I guess, looks nothing like the real "wailing wall," as if producers have no clue about the "wailing wall" or don't think it's important enough to make a reasonable close simulation of it. The whole movie treats it's audience as simple-minded, uneducated couch potatoes.
Seeing this as a religious film, it is incredibly insulting. This lies the main offense. It's not powerful enough to convert anyone and not realistic enough to make anyone want to know more. It's most heinous crime, though, is how it uses the Jews. If the Jews made a big-budget multi-million dollar film and a huge media campaign about how the Pope came to his senses and announces to the world how he has come to the conclusion that Jesus Christ was not GOD after all and everyone should know that and see the truth, there would be an UPROAR in the Christian community. But they seem to have no problem committing that perfidious insult onto the Jews. Rabbi Ben Judah, the most learned and respected scholar in the world, announces to the planet that Jesus Christ is indeed God and he has been wrong and now knows the truth. This is terrible, terrible injustice to the Jewish faith. Besides the fact that it is simply ludicrous to think that a Rabbi could sit on a podium in Israel and the entire world of different religions is going to sit back and take his word for it just because he thinks so and these other religions be converted (What planet is this film on? Certainly not Earth), but to put words like that in the mouth of the head of another religion and have them say how wrong they were, well, it's just hateful and disrespectful, that's all. It's also disturbing that the whole conspiracy of trying to take over the world comes from INTERNATIONAL BANKERS, which has always been another word for Jews when it is in this context. It's just another example of the total disregard for the integrity of the Jews. It feigns respect for them while denigrating their beliefs. Coupled with a preposterous plot and representation, this film fails as both an action thriller and as a religious film.
Easy Come, Easy Go (1967)
Go and don't come back
This movie is terrible. Elvis's acting is like a bad high school production. He just mumbles his lines and sleepwalks to the next scene. The fights also are staged and rather unreal.
But it's so bad, it has a little value in being so bad. It's funny to watch Elvis. He gives almost NO INFLECTION to any of his lines. It's a silly movie. If you like Elvis, you might like it, but that would be the only reason.
Some of the songs are good. Elvis is a good singer, but bad actor.
Stalingrad (1993)
Truth or Revisionism
I saw this and I was very disturbed, in a strange way. It's not that it is not well-done, and historical in a sense. But to me, and this is my opinion, it's a propaganda film to try to humanize the Germans and try to make us feel sorry for them. The Germans, who attacked Russia and planned to starve millions of them!
It's true that many portrayals of Nazi Germany portray them as "complete evil" and not even human. It has swung to such an extreme, the Nazi's have almost become a cartoon cliche and when you see the boots and uniforms, you can become detached from their humanity and it can alienate you from the fact that these are real people. It makes them nonhuman and that can be a great peril because they are so evil, it can make you think that the danger is past and cannot come again. So I am not for a total "evil incarnate" image of the Germans- I'm not talking Hitler- there may have been people who were AS evil as Hitler, but I surely don't think there's ever been someone who has been MORE EVIL - and surely he's the most evil man who ever held the power to back it up. But I'm talking about the Army itself and while I said I'm for allowing these soldiers to have human emotions, IN THIS FILM, instead of the extreme of robotic evil, it SWINGS the entire other way and tries to convince people that instead, they were a good people in bad circumstances. There's no middle ground here, I saw. The characters I saw here simply CANNOT BE this innocent and while I think it's possible for them to have some of the qualities, I find it IMPOSSIBLE they have ALL OF THEM which are presented in this movie. I'll elaborate with examples-
I guess there are spoilers here, so don't read if you don't want them. The soldiers are shown to do all of this:
1. When they come across a Russian boy, they actually give him bread to eat because they feel sorry for him.
2. When this same boy is supposed to be shot, the soldiers shoot him but in a heart-tugging scene, you would think they are horrified at it.
3. They are honorable to women. There is a Russian women who gets raped, and a gentle soldier demands that no one touch her.
4. They simply don't agree with this war and try any means to get out.
5. They cry, they talk about their mothers and fathers, they are kind to many people.
Maybe some of these things happened, but it seems to me, knowing what we know of the Germans and Stalingrad, that ALL these qualities could be embodied in the same men is dubious, at best. If so, it has be an anomaly of epic proportions. It could be a compilation of different memories, but c'mon! There's no middle ground here! I realize the film wants the audience to see the German Army as human beings, but they go too far in painting a white picture with no shades of black. I'm sure, the film-makers want to change people's opinions of the Germans during this time, and I'm not saying there weren't man like this. But give me a break!
Hollywood Ending (2002)
Possibly the WORST movie ever made
How can I say that? Surely, there are other movies that more suit the title? Well, NO. Most bad movies are bad because there are so many people in the control of the production. No matter what you think, the Director is usually powerless if executives want to add or rearrange movies the way they seem fit. It's these EXECUTIVE types who normally ruin the movies you think are so bad. But WOODY ALLEN has COMPLETE artistic freedom to whatever he wants. He is one of the ONLY directors in the US who have this power. And that's what makes this movie so HORRIBLE. This is a making movies-by-habit and it is a total slap in the face to anyone who buys a movie ticket. Woody Allen, who so often has demeaned other directors and writers for making movies that seem unworthy of the medium has just made a movie for no other reason than he was given the money to do it. I cannot believe Woody Allen put this thing together and thought it was good. He couldn't. IT'S AWFUL. It's UNWATCHABLE.
It's thrown together like three eggs about to be scrambled. I don't want to harp on age differences, but when Woody comes in to meet his girlfriend Debra Messing, she couldn't even pass for his DAUGHTER! She looks like his GRANDDAUGHTER. But that disturbing casting does not ruin the movie. It's the WRITING. Woody Allen is making comedies when he is no longer funny. And he throws lines out there just to see if they stick to the wall. These are non-stick walls, folks. I'll give you an example. In one scene, someone mentions he should buy a mercedes and he says, "I can't be driving around in a 29 Mercedes, people will mistake me for Himmler." Now, that is about the STUPIDEST thing I ever heard. HIMMLER? Just because it's slightly obscure, Woody thinks it will cause a laugh. No, Goering is too well-known, he goes for Himmler. And it's a TERRIBLE decision. He also has many jokes later in the movie about a guy whose act is biting the head off of rats, and then we get several rathead-biting comments in the film. It's a TERRIBLE MISCALCULATION. The FIRST rat-joke wasn't funny, it was STUPID. None of these jokes have any wit.
Two times in the movie, Woody tries to evoke his past genius. One is a cocktail scene early on when some literary names are banted about, and some sex jokes with it, ala Manhattan. Also, there is a scene where Lea Teoni and Treat Williams talk for an extended time the camera stays still while they go in and out of the room talking. It's very "Hannah-Crimes-Husband" and it would have worked, but the dialogue is so bad, you don't even care.
A worst movie ever would be one in which someone takes TERRIBLE advantage of you as a fan and a movie-goer, and then insults you in the process. A movie that wants you to walk out of it in the first ten minutes and lose your money. This is the one. I think every year, I am going to just send Woody my seven bucks and save myself the torture.
The Curse of the Jade Scorpion (2001)
Curse of Bad Writing
I have seen every Woody Allen movie and this is the worst one, bar none. It's even worse than Celebrity, which used to be the worst one. And I tell you, I'm such a Woody Allen fan, I saw Celebrity 3 times, each time trying to find some kind of redeeming quality to it, and failed.
But this one I will never sit through a second time because it is absolute TORTURE. AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL should include Allen as one of the torturers living in the United States bases solely on this movie.
Mia Farrow might not have been the best lover or partner, but she would NEVER have allowed him to put out films like this. HORRIBLE.