davespamblock Reviews

Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (2005)

painful acting

[6/10 · 12 January 2008]

I think you have to blame George Lucas for the painfully shallow performances by Natalie Portman and Hayden Christensen. They've both done reasonable work in other movies with better directors.

This movie is about special effects and grand vistas and breathtaking settings.

But when you are actually in the middle of a scene involving sentient lifeforms, someone cracks a window and all the air is sucked into space. Screams of silent agony rise from the Emperor's latest torture chamber, i.e. your local movie theater.

George, please become an executive producer and exalted director and please delegate everything to a talented and ferocious star who will do justice to what you've created. Let go of the writing and dialog so we can enjoy these movies and they can become epics, not compromised behemoths.

Really, you are going to have to re-shoot all the dialog from the last three movies and re-release them.

Radioactive Dreams (1984)

prepare to groan

[3/10 · 20 June 2007]

I purchased this as an old rental VHS tape from an Amazon third party vendor, hoping that it would be a gem in the rough. More rough than gem, that's for sure. The two leads provide breathtakingly awful acting. There's enough molasses-slow pacing here to make one those lethargic 50's era B-movies seem like an amphetamine commercial directed by Tony Scott. Of course that's only when new-wave punk 80's band members aren't blowing each other across the screen. Blowing up. I meant to say blowing each other up.

If you are a cult film fan, then all the pain you have to endure with a movie like this is just part of the fun. For the rest of us... well, bring one of those bags the airlines keep in the back of every seat. You'll need it for scenes with lines such as, "...that was our first encounter with disco mutants. I was sure it wouldn't be our last."

I would only recommend this if you and your friends get high every day and enjoy watching popcorn pop. Just don't take anything too strange or you may end up gnawing off your own hand.

The Mistress of Spices (2005)

Great idea, but Dylan McDermott did not belong in that role

[4/10 · 7 June 2007]

Everything was in place for this to be a real benchmark American Bollywood fusion flick (are there enough out there for that to be an actual genre?), but Dylan McDermott was so horribly miscast as Aishwarya Rai's love interest that I was gagging every time they shared the screen. Painfully unwatchable. How oafish, vapid and superficial can a guy be? Really, this film could have been so much more powerful with a more appropriate male lead.

The idea of the magic of the spices was a bit of a stretch for me at first, but Aishwarya played it well and carried it off nicely. I liked how the intent of each spice could turn on its head if the rules were not followed. Great colors!

Remember folks, listen to the chilies. They should have warned the casting director, heh heh.