dockbennett Reviews

War of the Worlds (2005)

Incredible when released, and still incredible now

[9/10 · 16 April 2013]

I saw Steven Spielberg's "War Of The Worlds" when it first came out, and it blew me away. It was, in my view, an incredible adaption of the H.G. Wells story, one that had been filmed decently, but not brilliantly, in the fifties. I also heard the reviews from Australian critics David Stratton and Margaret Pomeranz, both of which were in similar adoration.

So it eventually amazed me when I was to read many, many people (both critics and the average viewer) condemning the film on various levels, reducing it to, at best, a modest runaround with many faults. I have now just watched it for, I think, the fourth time, and my adoration for it has not faded in the slightest.

One major criticism is that the characters were unappealing, particularly the screaming girl. It is true that Cruise and his kids did not have the best relationship, but I have seen far worse leading characters in many, many films that would make these three look like Mother Theresa cloned. And let's remember that, while the movie industry is supposed to be primarily about entertainment (especially when it takes on something like science fiction), it has to be grounded in some kind of reality, and was it really too hard to accept that young Fanning would go through a few screaming fits when she finds herself being hunted down by murderous aliens? Personally, if anything, I found her brother more of a pain.

There has also been criticism about the ending, and I think that is a bit more legitimate. After all that went before it, the conclusion comes a bit suddenly and ends up being something of an anti-climax. But, although I have not read the book, isn't that kind of what happened? The aliens eventually found the Earth's air poisonous and dropped dead? But yes, more could have been made of this, and I do think Spielberg missed a bit of an opportunity there.

But what about all that went before it? There are so many wonderful scenes to praise in this film, such as the first arrival of the aliens and the initial creature's rise from the ground; the scene of the burning train going past, the attack on the boat and the nail-biting hide and seek from the martian's probe. But through all this were two great constants - the magnificent special effects, and the chilling sound the machines made; those deep, deathly cries remain one of the most unforgettable pieces of audio I have ever heard in any film.

It is a grim movie. While there really isn't any gore, it's still very serious, with little humour, and it becomes especially confronting when Cruise and Fanning find themselves prisoners in one of the machines, along with other crying, despairing humans who are being plucked out one by one to have their blood sucked out of them. But this is an invasion by aliens - such acts don't usually result in happy walks through the park.

While not perfect, "War Of The Worlds" remains an incredible film, one of the greatest alien-invasion releases I've ever had the pleasure to view. Maybe it's not "Jaws", "Raiders Of The Lost Ark" or "Jurassic Park", but it remains one of Spielberg's greatest triumphs. I think I've viewed it often enough now to be confident in that view.

Man on Fire (2004)

Oh, my head...

[4/10 · 2 March 2013]

What to make of this film? In the first half, we have Washington and Fanning giving lovely performances as a bodyguard and bodyguardee, who bond as he looks after her. Of course, there has to be an eventual kidnapping, and that certainly happens.

The result of it should have had me in tears. I'm that kind of sap who would be heartbroken by such a thing, even in fiction. But I felt absolutely nothing, and part of that has to be because the characters themselves hardly seemed to have any emotion.

Warning - Spoiler Ahead! - They thought the girl had been killed, and yet her loved ones behaved more like they were just sad because she'd gone away for a while! I know it's each to his own, but I could not believe any loving mother (and an eventually loving bodyguard) would have reacted in such a subdued manner.

But anyway, once this does happen, it's "Death Wish" time, as Washington sets out to avenge all who are responsible for the dastardly dead. Director Scott threatens to give viewers permanent migraines with his dreadful, hyper-kinetic style, making the film look like a bad rap video, and as for the subtitles... Sometimes the characters speak in Spanish, sometimes in English. And sometimes the subtitles come up when they're speaking in Spanish, and sometimes in English! It's as if the subtitler couldn't keep up with the change in languages, like, "Oops, he spoke English there, I shouldn't have put that one up. Oh damn, missed that Spanish one!" And the way they zoomed in and out, went left to right, up and down... and whatever else they did... were they meant to be some kind of joke?

Somehow, despite the movie going on and on and on, and with all these flaws, it did keep my interest. Oddly, I think I should really hate the thing, and I'm not sure why I don't. Maybe that, no matter how bad some of it was, it was intriguingly so.

But I'd better stop thinking about it all now. I think I feel a migraine coming on.

Birdemic: Shock and Terror (2010)

Bad as bad is bad

[1/10 · 26 December 2012]

Every now and again, I read a review on this site of a film where the person says things like, "it's the worst movie I've ever seen!", when it might indeed be pretty ordinary, but not really one star basis. My thought is usually, "You really don't know what 'bad' is, do you?" "Birdemic: Shock And Terror" is bad. It is as bad as what people say it is. It is almost unbelievably bad, and I can believe a lot. It is gobsmackingly awful - this coming from a fan of Ed Wood.

Rod and Nathalie are two former schoolmates who happen to come across each other, and proceed to fall in love, also happening to find out that they just happen to have neutral fans who also just happen to be in love.

Nothing occurs in the first half of the film. Nothing. After the opening credits, where a tinny tune is played on a continuous loop, we are treated to deadening acting (although, in defense, Whitney Moore isn't too bad), atrocious dialogue, horrible sound and dreadful editing. This all makes it vastly entertaining, for those who are fascinated by such ineptness.

After this first half of routine and dreadful drama, the birds start attacking. Just like that. There are a couple of references to strange things happening in nature earlier but, really, it could have all just been a 'straight' (so to speak) love story beforehand.

It could be that filmmaker James Nguyen, a self-proclaimed Hitchcock fan, tried to take a leaf out of the Master's book here, where Hitch sometimes had his thrillers trundle along in an unalarming way for a while until, almost casually, things would start to happen and, before we knew it, the thrills were on.

The difference is, of course, that Hitchcock did it with style, wit and panache.

To say the birds attack is a very loose statement. In reality, they are superimposed on the screen, bouncing up and down, while the actors wave various articles at them. When one thinks about it, this is not really very surprising. If a scene of two people talking in a restaurant can't be handled above the level of complete incompetence, how could we expect more from the special effects later? As we go on, our heroes fire guns, with unlimited ammunition, at the birds, while driving around aimlessly, trying to help others, including picking up two children.

These children have just seen their mother killed by the birds. And yet, before long, they're sitting in the back seat of the car playing computer games, and demanding Happy Meals!

Other people get killed by birds suddenly flying past them, and seeming to clip them with their beaks or claws, which is enough to drop them on the spot.

And the ending. The ending... It's utter meaninglessness suits the film perfectly.

As someone who is fascinated by true badness (not just in movies), "Birdemic" transcends such things for me. Everything that could possibly be wrong in filmmaking (again, with the possible exception of Moore) is on display here. Everything. Maybe one day, Tim Burton will do a sequel to "Ed Wood" and call it "James Nguyen", although it would be harder to pronounce. But surely it would be worth the admission price.

American Beauty (1999)

Astonishingly Bad

[1/10 · 21 July 2012]

It's 2012 and I've only just watched this film. I'm really only familiar with it because of the video cover I've seen around for years, and probably only watched it because I've been catching up on 90s films I have not seen, or have seen and want to again. In fact, it was only just before I watched it that I realised it had won 5 Oscars, including Best Picture. That last fact had me hardly able to believe my eyes as I saw the tripe unfolding on the screen before me.

This repugnant, puerile piece of garbage actually won Best Picture?? And it has one of the highest ratings on this site?? I live in Australia. Ironically, I visited America the year this film came out. I toured around and visited several friends and their families. None of them came close to the complete losers portrayed here. Spacey is now a man because he's thrown in his job, blackmailed his boss and lusts after a school girl, as well as treating his family like dirt. Benning... well, she was just a complete embarrassment. I mean, seriously! How can anyone watch her and not cringe?? The daughter is the typical moody brat that always appears on screen (we're just told that she's the "typical teenager" - shock horror, I've actually met teenagers who are quite level-headed and half-way decent as human beings), and her slutty friend, the object of Spacey's pathetic desires, completes the abject collection of unbearable characters. Oh, there's also the weird, drug-selling boy who loves to watch plastic bags.

This is not good drama; i's unwatchable. It's not good comedy; it's never remotely funny, not in a dark way or any other way it seems to think it is. It's not clever and it's not deep. I've read around this site and see "American Beauty" is very much love it or hate it, and I know I'm not alone with my revulsion for this thing. And, from what I've seen, most of the haters seem to be Americans who have taken offense to Hollywood's out-of-touch ideas of the "typical" American family.

There are some movies ("The Matrix" springs to mind) that many adore, but which I can't get a handle on, and yet I respect those who do love it and, eventually watching it again, I could appreciate it somewhat more, and assumed I just haven't been able to "get" it. But this thing... what is going on? I thought "Titanic" wishing Best Picture was a joke, but that's "Gone With The Wind" compared with this appalling piece of junk, and the fact that it is revered by so many is the most repellent part of all.

Titanic (1997)

Bad and Good - no other film like it

[6/10 · 7 April 2012]

I first saw "Titanic" in fairly early 1998, I think, here in Australia. I went with a girl I had recently got to know on the Internet. She had already seen it, and spoke in raptures about it after we left the cinema, while I was hesitating somewhat, as I was not sure about what I had just witnessed. Since then, I have seen the film at least twice more, including just now, and I stick by my opinion that I have never seen a movie that is so bad and so good at the same time.

The bad, as so many people have said, is the script. Well, the characters too. The main romance is so embarrassingly contrived as to be juvenile, and this is not helped by the character of Rose. Quite frankly, I can't stand her, and can only wonder why Jack did not push the little brat off the ship when he had the chance. Speaking of Jack, I liked him. He and Molly Brown were, by far, the two best characters shown. I'm not bagging the acting of Winslett. I think she did well. I just thought her character was loathsome. Not much better is Cal. I couldn't stand him either, and yes, I know you're not meant to like him, but I didn't like the way I didn't like him! Talk about a corny villain. Snobby, cowardly... by the time he picked up the child to get his way off the ship, I was thinking, "Alright, we get the idea. He's a creep." Really, I thought the whole "first class and the rest" concept was overdone. Yes, I know it was an issue, but it's so clumsy and obvious as to be cringe worthy. But probably the worst and most disappointing character was the captain. Here was someone I would have loved to got to know. Ultimately, the sinking was all his fault. Yet there was no depth to him, instead just coming off as a feeble human being who did and said little, and who looked (understandably) more and more desolate as he saw what was happening.

But then there is the good. The sinking. Absolutely incredible. I am always fascinated by the fact that the ship started to sink but, as is the nature of such events, everything looks normal for a while. People moved around as usual, the ship just kept motoring along. And yet we knew it would be under water in a couple of hours. The gradual submersion is enthralling, and technically brilliant. This is why I like to come back to the film, and no it's not because I'm a disaster fan (which I am) who just wants to see people die and not care about things like romance. Not at all. Really, no. A key to such films is depth of character and their relationships with each other. No real people means no emotional charge when said disaster happens. The effects are breathtaking, and the model work stunning. I can't enthuse enough about this part of the film.

But the bad comes close to killing it all, and my view does not change after each time I see it. "Titanic" polarises me like no other film I've ever seen. It is awful. It is tremendous. Ultimately, the mixture makes it a middling film at best, which is a great shame. How it won Best Picture at the Oscars remains one of the biggest jokes in cinema history. But maybe, if we can forget about the bad, we can revel in the good, and appreciate some of the most stunning moments ever filmed in Hollywood.

Shrooms (2007)

Can't someone do better than this?

[3/10 · 26 September 2009]

I've only myself to blame.

When a film boasts that it has a group of tourists getting high on funny mushrooms, resulting in them being "attacked by ghostly creatures, never sure whether they are experiencing gruesome reality or startling hallucinations", the chances are it will contain tourists getting high on funny mushrooms, resulting in them being attacked by ghostly creatures, never sure whether they are experiencing gruesome reality or startling hallucinations.

And I am unlikely to really go for that.

So what we have is some young people, who start out alright, but become more repugnant as the film goes, running around a swamp, screaming, swearing, getting more and more muddy, while bodies and leering faces jump out at them in entirely predictable ways, while the camera zooms around in that style that has become quite trendy in recent years. Admittedly, a story that involves hallucinations is as good as any to be filmed in such a way, but that doesn't make it any less annoying.

The result is an incomprehensible mishmash; ugly (not so much because of gore, as there is surprisingly little, but the direction), dumb and, in the end, just dull. But I will give it one thing.

It's the first time I've ever seen a horror film with a talking cow.

The Ruins (2008)

Pretty ordinary

[3/10 · 25 September 2009]

Here is an example of a good idea wasted.

Some young tourists are "quarantined" in some ruins by locals because of rather strange plant-like creatures that infect them.

The creatures potentially are quite interesting, especially in how they mimic sound, but this hardly matters, since what we're treated to are a lot of unpleasant operations, where legs are cut off and knives are stuck under the skin to get the invading little critters out of their victims' bodies.

I also had to scratch my head at why, if the locals wanted to keep the visitors from infecting the areas around them, why they didn't just kill them, rather than go to all that effort to keep them prisoner??

What could have been a fun horror is, instead, grim, slow and tedious.

Imagine That (2009)

What audience is this supposed to be aimed at?

[6/10 · 23 September 2009]

I just saw this film with a group of children, whom we took as part of our Holiday Care programme here in Brisbane, Australia. As there were no toilet trips, I actually managed to see it all!

Overall, I thought it was a pretty good and entertaining film, but it was hard to know to whom it was aimed at. The business meetings Murphy went to and various discussions about same were certainly not down to children's levels, and a lot of kids in the cinema clearly got quite restless, including some of ours, at least one of whom complained about the movie being "boring". But when Murphy went on his comedy antics, it was a bit too juvenile for adults.

I thought Eddie was great, as was Yara Shahidi as the young girl, in an absolutely lovely, natural performance, while Thomas Haden Church was amusing as the fake Indian. But what was with the imaginary friends?? Were they real? If not, how did the girl get all the right information about the businesses? If they were... well... the film didn't seem to relay that. Wasn't it all generally another morality tale about parent/child bonding?

And what was with all the Beatles songs?

Certainly a pretty entertaining picture, but who is it for?

A Night at the Opera (1935)

I love it. Love it.

[10/10 · 19 September 2009]

Maybe I'm biased because it's the first Marx Brothers film I ever saw, but this remains my favourite of theirs, and one of my favourite films of all. One thing that strikes me about it is it's not only funny, but FUN! To share just one example, when Groucho's looking out of the ship's porthole, trying to pull Harpo in as he's hanging from a rope, he says, "You're alright, but the boat's too far away!" It's just a happy, gleeful moment. And the music. All the music is wonderful. The songs are lovely, and Allen sings beautifully, although I don't care much of Carlisle's voice. She just wasn't very good. And I can never get enough of Chico's incredible piano playing - I dream of being able to play like that - while Harpo's harping is lovely. "Duck Soup" is up there as one of their best, but for me, "A Night At The Opera" will always be number one. I love it with a passion.

The Invisible Man (1933)

A true classic

[10/10 · 14 July 2009]

"Frankenstein"... "Dracula"... "Freaks"... these are famous horror films from the thirties, but for mine, "The Invisible Man" tops them all. It's the premise that really does it for me. A madman who can't be seen. This is truly scary, and Rains does a magnificent job, mostly with his voice, as a character who is truly vicious and merciless. I have to say I wasn't impressed by too many of the other characters, although I always love Una O'Connor and her hysterics. She's a hoot. But, especially early on, I found some of the acting wooden, and also some of the dialogue very ordinary. But what overcomes these factors is, as I've said, the whole premise, and also the magnificent special effects, truly remarkable for a film from 1933. "The Invisible Man" is a true classic of cinema history, and one that stands up to repeated viewings.

Feet First (1930)

Well below his best

[4/10 · 17 April 2009]

A mild mannered young man, working at the bottom rung of a shoe shop, falls for a high society girl and tries to reinvent himself. Lloyd's second talkie is really divided into three sections; working and meeting the girl, unwittingly traveling on a cruise ship, and then hanging onto a high rise building for his life. However, it's well below the standard of the best of Harold's silents (like the lovely "The Kid Brother"). The film does get better as it goes (the ship and building sections do become reasonably entertaining, if nothing else), but it's rarely very funny, and one can't help but think it would have worked better as a silent.

The Amityville Horror (1979)

Dull

[3/10 · 25 November 2006]

I first saw this film years and years ago, and remember finding it boring, but I did wonder whether I had been influenced by the critics at the time, who had not been very kind to it. I watched it again last night, and I realised it IS boring. It's also not even remotely scary. We see flies... black goo... cats... glowing eyes.. and, well... why? What did they have to do with the murders from a year previously? As another person has suggested, James Brolin walks around like he's asleep, and is very unappealing. The rest of the cast is so-so. This has the makings of a scary, "traditional" haunted house story, but it just isn't. It's a long snooze.

The Sadist (1963)

Surprising, to a degree

[6/10 · 9 March 2006]

Like, it seems, most people, I approached this film expecting something terrible, especially after recently viewing "Eegah", and I, also like others, was surprised that it wasn't all that bad at all. However, I didn't think it was all that great either, and this is where I differ. I thought Hall was hilariously awful. Maybe I didn't take him the right way. But I found myself laughing at what to me was hysterical overacting from a teenage "hunk" who was trying to break a mold. This was, I think, partly to do with me having seen "Eegah" first. I also thought the dialogue was pretty ordinary, and at the end, I was thinking that if they had another actor playing the killer, and improved the dialogue by about 100%, they'd have a pretty good thriller here. I might have to try it again sometime, and maybe I'll be able to look at it in a different way.

The Fly (1958)

One of the best

[8/10 · 8 December 2005]

This is one of the best science-fiction (and horror) films of the 50s, even though it, on the surface, doesn't seem to do much. But the horror is there, and it is chilling from the moment Elaine reads the first note from her husband, to the ending, which is one of the most unforgettable in movie history.

The silence of the fly/man as he communicates with his wife, and the way he eats and drinks, are just a couple of factors that make this so genuinely scary, and Elaine is a truly heartbreaking innocent in the whole situation.

Frightening and gripping, this is an outstanding film.

Wishmaster (1997)

Nasty

[2/10 · 19 April 2005]

I've watched heaps of gory horrors before... every "Friday The 13th" film, every Freddy film, "The Evil Dead" (1 and 2, which surely must be the two most gory movies ever made), and HEAPS more, and while they have varied in terms of quality, I've 'handled' them very well, as there was a time when I thought I was squeamish and easily sickened.

But "Wishmaster" was different, and I'm not sure how. It upset me, and unsettled me. Decapitation by piano wire, a scene that has stayed inside my head... I've seen more gruesome stuff than that. And yet I have reacted differently. The only thing I can think of is this has a very nasty tone - something that, somehow, other horrors I've seen have not had. It's even got to the point where I have avoided watching the sequels to this extremely gruesome piece.

It's really not much of a film anyway - but, unlike other weak horrors, I was repelled by it.

Maybe I'm getting old.

Don't Go Near the Park (1979)

Goodness me...

[3/10 · 26 April 2003]

Wow... This site really does have every film possible. I found this film in a video rental place several years ago, and, in my usual fascination for unknown, Z-Grade looking films, rented it, and was fascinated by its badness. I remember thinking that it seemed to be the result of the editor throwing up all the little pieces of the film in the air, and randomly picking some up and putting them together. If he went to get the rest of the pieces, we could have ended up with another film entirely. I rented it again sometime later. I have never seen it since. I miss it. :(

The Birth of a Nation (1915)

Racism or not, this is fantastic

[10/10 · 20 April 2003]

Not being an American, I mightn't react as badly as a lot of viewers would, but, as has been suggested, didn't Griffith just depict a part in history? I mean, WEREN'T most of the baddies blacks back then, and didn't the KKK defeat them? Griffith was actually accused as being racist at the time, and in reply, he brought out the just as brilliant "Intolerance" the following year. This is an incredible film. Magnificent.