Change Your Image
mryland
Reviews
Dragonlance: Dragons of Autumn Twilight (2008)
Tolkien gets Peter Jackson, we get Hanna Barbera?
Movies with high expectations need to deliver, and unfortunately this one fails to do so. A fan of the original series myself, I found myself glad that the show had finally been made into a movie, but sad that this was created instead.
Dragonlance: Dragons of Autumn Twilight certainly stayed as faithful as it could to its material (given time restraints) and the voice actors were great, but the animation made this a monstrosity. The animation was clearly done on the cheap and very choppy. With the high expectations coming from Japanese animation or even Disney, the movie had a very low frames per second rate, poor quality and poor integration with 3D effects. I would rate it somewhere between Yogi Bear and a Disney channel cartoon. And for a movie that certainly focused on the female form, parents will certainly think twice before letting kids watch this, and the animation certainly won't attract adults anyway. What were the producers thinking? Furthermore, haven't people learned that 3D and animation do not mix? It just shows off how poor the animation is and the low frame rate, and the audience has difficulty seeing what is occurring on the messy screen. When the draconians (3D) and the characters meet, it looks plain awful.
In all - I felt something special was missing from the movie and that many would be introduced to Dragonlance through this was a shame.
Dragonlance fans such as myself can take heart though - The Lord of the Rings was made into one of the worst animated movies ever in 1978. Perhaps we need to wait another 25 years until a director can do justice to this wonderful series.
September Dawn (2007)
Biased and bad
Some films are made to entertain. Some to inform. Some raise valid points and views about society. After watching this movie, I'm trying to think of what the film makers were trying to do other than bash Mormons.
The film depicts a controversial event in Mormon history, the Mountain Meadows Massacre. The events in film are depicted in a one sided view of history where Mormons are mindless savage zealots and everyone else is perfect. Watching the film gave me chills on the spine with the degree to which the Mormons are painted with. After watching the movie and researching the scenes, I found that most of them were completely made up.
I know Mormons myself and I see no resemblance to these guys versus the people I know. It would be like saying the September 11 people who crashed the planes into the World Trade Center were representative of Muslims everywhere. This film is more akin to propaganda than an honest open interpretation of events, and in that it is dangerous to give works like these credibility.
If the filmmakers intend to produce misleading works like this, they should go into the world of advertising, not film.
Even as a piece of entertainment, the film fails miserably. The problem with a piece of propaganda is that it doesn't reflect real characters, it merely takes characters and attempts to create unbelievably evil or unbelievably good characters that no one can relate to. They fail to create a persona that comes across the screen. As a result, it was quite boring to me.
Even on a personal level, I felt repulsed by the movie as I watched it.
Also, I discovered through my research that Ebert rated this movie zero stars, which is amazing because I didn't know he rated that low.
Intellectual Property (2006)
Thoughtful yet unfulfilling
I just watched the movie and decided that while it was good, there was quite a bit missing that could have just made it step over the line from being an indie film into something special.
The movie tells the story of a gifted inventor who slowly descends into a state of perpetual paranoia where reality and fantasy become difficult to tell apart. We also cannot tell whether reality is as messy as it appears or if it is merely paranoid delusions taken to their conclusion, even by the end. This makes the conclusion difficult to digest as things are still not clear, and we find that we do not understand the character as we find ourselves with little to sympathize with in the story with all the characters. Perhaps that is on purpose (aka M Night Shy.... something) but people don't commit themselves to a movie unless they see characters they can empathize with. That's why cool movies about alien invasions are usually more of a drama than a sci-fi action flick.
The film also has difficulty making its point. Is it anti-communist? Is it pro-America? Is it telling us about the human condition? Is it telling us about paranoia? By the ending, I felt like I had watched a movie with a great deal of creativity and expression that had something to say and succeeded on some level but due to budgetary constraints and inexperience had limited itself. If the story was rehashed with more obvious yet subtle clues, more energy, more connections with characters and much more coherence, it would have been more memorable.
Moscow Zero (2006)
Not exciting
I was hooked in by the premise that the show was about demons. From hell. And a doorway to hell. What I didn't realize was that I would be watching some guys run around tunnels chased by small children who may / may not have been demons for the entire movie. Sure there was some dialogue in between, and great underground scenery but the lack of a plot, developed characters, any twists or development in the story at all was sorely lacking. Oh, and out of interest, there were no special effects. The entire budget was spent on actors salaries, sets and lots of time running around with a camera underground.
The ending was one of the typical lackluster boring endings that makes you say "I endured this film of boredom for that!?" If you want to see demons and a doorway to hell, I promise you that you would be better off served watching the trailers to the game Hellgate : London which while shorter than this movie at 5 minutes, pack more dialogue, character development, action, plot and satisfying conclusions than this.
The second star is for effort, but overall a low score for failing to make a movie that stands out, and for promising in the tagline much more than what was delivered.