machine-13's Reviews

Meet the Parents (2000)

15 October 2000

I had a good time at this movie. Ben Stiller is Greg Focker, "It's pronounced like it's spelled...Focker" who is getting ready to engage to his girlfriend (Teri Polo). But first he must meet her parents. His girlfriend's father, (Robert De Niro) is a "flower expert" who is well known for not liking some of his daughter's choices in boyfriends. First off, Focker is warned not to smoke in the house, because the father finds smoking as a sign of weakness, and his girlfriend throws his pack of cigarettes on the roof (which come in later). To help his craving, Focker purchases some Nicarette gum, in which he chews several pieces at a time. The big laughs start with an urn containing a dead grandma's ashes and the family cat, who has an unusual talent of using the toilet.

Ben Stiller's character is similar to his character in There's Something About Mary, he's a clumsy, shy guy just trying to impress his girl and her parents, but everything seems to go wrong for him. For anyone who has tried to impress a date's parents, or has had bad experiences at airports will be able to simpify with Stiller's character. There are many big laughs in this movie, and most of the jokes all join together perfectly (ex, Focker is trying to catch the family cat on the roof, but ends up just causing more trouble in a hilarious sequence I won't ruin for you.)

Meet the parents is one of the better quality comedies recently, and I recommend that you give it a chance.

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Iron Eagle (1986)

Could of been a little better...

29 August 2000

The plot for this movie is good: Doug Masters is a young pilot who's dad has been shot down over a middle eastern country. He is being held hostage and is scheduled to be hanged in three days. After the air force tells him that there is not much they can do, Doug decides to take matters into his own hands. With the help of his friends and a war veteran Chappy Sinclair (excellently played by Lou Gossit Jr.) he "borrows" two fighter jets and flies over to save his dad.

The plot has a real sense of adventure to it and it is one of those stories about a boy becoming a man. The soundtrack is good, especially the main theme at the ending credits. I did like the scenes where Chappy and the gang prepare for the upcoming mission, but this process became too long and drug out. It took forever for Doug to get in the air. There are a few annoying characters, and one pathetic dance scene. The explosions are quick, small and brief. There is one great explosion though, when Doug launches a Hades bomb that creates a wall of fire.

The exciting dogfights are the high point of this movie. There is also a Saddam Hussein-esque, laugh-inducing main villain who has lines like, "The Americans must die!" There are other weak lines, and the movie does move slow in some parts. But overall, this movie is ok, certainly not the best of the series, though.

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Sometimes They Come Back... for More (1998 Video)

Different and suspenseful

3 August 2000

Ok, this wasn't a great movie, I've seen much better. But this did NOT deserve to make it on the worst 100 movies list. Fans of the first two movies might enjoy this. It's about two people from the military who are sent to a base in Antarctica to investigate some mysterious occurences. When they get there, they find two survivors in the base. The one soldier finds that a demon from his past resides here, and now the four must survive. First of all, the setting is great in this movie. It's desolate, moody, and a great place to stage a horror/thriller. I know, I know, it's a rip-off of The Thing, but it's still cool. The are some great moments of suspense in this movie. It falls apart a little towards the end, but is still enjoyable. Thankfully it doesn't go into slasher-movie-mode like the previous film. The villain on the other hand, is dull compared to the bad guys of the first two films. One thing I forgot to add in my review of the previous Sometimes They Come Back...Again was that at some points the villains' eyes would be like a cat's (with a slit for the pupils) which was very cool looking. In this movie, towards the end the bad guy's eyes just turn all black to show that he's evil. This is done with a computer, and ends up looking stupid and not threatening at all. Once again, this movie made a reference to the first two movies in the series. This I like, because it helps to join all three films together. This movie might be strictly just for fans of the Sometimes They Come Back series... but if you want an ok movie that has some suspense and a unique setting, give Sometimes They Come Back... For More a chance.

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Maximum Overdrive (1986)

Funny

3 August 2000

I think Stephen King realized he couldn't make his creepy short story Trucks into a serious movie, so for the film adaption he turned it into a humorous comedy-horror, and he did good on that level. In this movie, the Earth is in tail of a passing comet for several days, and this causes all machines to come alive and act homicidal towards humans. It starts when a mouthy ATM machine begins to swear at customers (a hilarious opening scene) and then eventually all machines go crazy. Specifically tractor trailers. The movie centers around a group of people trapped in a truck stop by the machines, and they fight to survive. This movie has many funny moments, and it follows the short story closely in certain parts. (Only certain parts) My one complaint about this film is the "steamroller scene". You'll see. Other than that, an entertaining movie that provides some laughs and has a good soundtrack by AC DC, which really helps with the mood.

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Sometimes They Come Back... Again (1996 Video)

Creepy and different, but could of done without the slasher elements

2 August 2000

Sometimes They Come Back...Again is better than the original in some parts, but it is also worse. The flashbacks that appear throughout the movie are interesting and leak out information about the main character's past bit by bit. There are some good characters. My two favorites are the main villain, Tony (Alexis Arquette) who is very creepy, and Father Archer Roberts, a mysterious priest who the main character seeks help from. (Father Roberts is played by William Morgan Sheppard, who also had a similar role in Zork Nemesis, a cinematic computer game that also has a very somber, creepy mood. Check it out) The story is similar to the first movie, Jon Porter (Michael Gross) moves back to his hometown with his daughter after his mother dies. When he gets back, three demons from his past come back to terrorize him and his daughter. I smiled when several references were made to the original movie. Stephen King had put a demon raising ritual, in which you must cut off a finger, in his short story and it didn't make it for the first film, but this part of the story ...came back.. for the sequel. With all that the movie had a great, creepy mood to it, but unfortunately it begins to feel like a slasher movie, with a few characters dying miserably. That's the only element of this movie I don't like. Two characters died horribly on-screen, crying and screaming. In my opinion, that was a little inapropriate but, oh well. This movie is still good for any fan of the original movie.

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Sometimes They Come Back (1991 TV Movie)

More touching than the short story

2 August 2000

The short story this movie is based on is pretty good, and the movie adaption was also worthy of Stephen King. There were many spots in the short story that were left unexplored. The movie goes deeper into the story and pokes around those unexplored areas, for example the one man who survived the train wreck. The story is about Jim Norman, a man who witnessed his brother's murder by four teenage punks. The killers were hit by an oncoming train, but one escaped before it hit. Now Jim Norman takes up a job as a school teacher, having to move back to his hometown where the murder occured. When one of his students dies, a new one transfers in from another school, and he looks a little familiar... This movie isn't great, but I think it is worth checking out, especially if you've read Stephen King's short story. The three villains are cool and sometimes funny (the way they laugh and hoot is amusing) The ending is very touching and emotional and is one of my favorite movie endings. There are some differences from the original story, one notable one is in King's version, there is a bit which involves a ritual of raising demons where you must cut off two fingers. This element is missing in the movie adaption, but is added in the sequel, Sometimes They Come Back...Again.

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The Green Mile (1999)

Great and touching

14 July 2000

The Green Mile has to be one of my favorite movies of '99. The story: Tom Hanks plays a security guard who encounters John Coffey (Michael Clark Duncan), a man wrongly accused of murder and who later reveals that he has the power to heal people. Michael Clarke Duncan is awesome as John Coffey, a giant of a man who is gentle and child-like. He has to be my favorite character out of this movie. Tom Hanks and all the other guards and prisoners of the Green Mile, the name given to the death row because of the lime-green floor, are also very good characters. Pursey, a weaseley guard with a bad attitude, is one of those characters that you just love to hate. There are many other likeable characters in this movie, including a mouse which a prisoner names "Mr. Jingles". This movie has some lighthearted funny moments in it. For instance, in the night the guards try to find a mouse that has been poking around the prison. (Mr. Jingles) "Three grown men, outsmarted by a mouse!" It is also very touching in parts, specifically towards the end. If you get the chance, see this movie. In my opinion it's one of the best movies of 1999. Michael Clarke Duncan should of won an Accademy Award. Oh, well.

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Fight Club (1999)

Intelligent and entertaining

6 July 2000

Fight Club is the story of a man (Edward Norton) who is suffering from insomnia. He sleeps little, hates his white collar job, and is looking for help. He finds it in attending a countless number of therapy groups that range from Alcoholics Anonymous to a group for men with erectile disfunction. He finds comfort in being in a room full of troubled people being helped, and pretends to have the same problems so he too can be helped. Another faker makes her presense and attends all of our protagonist's sessions, which annoys him. They make a deal to attend sessions at different days. While traveling on the job, He meets a soap salesman (Brad Pitt) and after getting to know each other, they start Fight Club, a new kind of therapy. Our hero builds relationships with both Pitt's character and the other faker from the therapy sessions. The Fight Club also builds, and spreads across the country. I enjoyed this movie. Right from the beginning and through the movie, the main character is narrating the entire movie (a la Forrest Gump). There are many funny moments as he endures things that life throws at him. The movie builds from seeing the hero in his everyday life, to forming a club, and witnessing the mis-adventures he gets into from it. I like the laughs that the movie provides and it has a certain style and attitude to it. Towards the end, things get more serious and there is a major plot twist which is confusing at first, but after you complete the movie, it all makes sense and you might want to see the movie over again. Some people will see this movie expecting a "fight" movie with lots of brutal face-smashing and fist swinging. That's not what this movie is about. This movie is about a man's downward spiral and shows that an individual can also make a huge influence. This is a very intelligent movie and I find it very entertaining. It is very long though, 139 minutes to be exact. While Fight Club is not one of my all time favorite movies, I still like it a lot. If you like smart, witty movies, give Fight Club a chance.

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The Last Broadcast (1998)

Good and bad

5 July 2000

I first heard about The Last Broadcast on a Blair Witch Project message board. At first I confused it with an old film that depicts a family's last moments on earth from, you got it - a camcorder. I later learned that it was about four people going in to the woods to do a broadcast about the Jersey Devil. This excited me. I have read much about the Jersey Devil and have heard about many sightings. All the supposed encounter stories and legend of the Jersey Devil always scared the pants off me, so I thought this was going to be the most scariest movie I've seen. After I saw it, I was a little disappointed because the movie mainly focused on the mystery of who the killer was. (Four men went into the woods, but only one returned, and he was tried for murder.) I would of enjoyed this movie more if it would of focused more on the Jersey Devil. Unlike the Blair Witch, wich was made up of just the student's footage, The Last Broadcast plays out more like a documentary you'd see on the Justice Files or something of the like. The movie did have a creepy mood to it, but not creepy enough. The creepiest moments in this movie for me were 1. When they flashed that infamous police sketch of the Jersey Devil from 1909 - that was an actual sketch made from an actual report of the creature, and the only picture of the Jersey Devil that I know of that sends shivers up my spine from just glancing at it. 2. The recovered footage scene where we see two characters spot a blood splattter in the snow and run for their lives. 3. The computer-generated voice from the IRC chat saying "Why don't you do a show about the Jersey Devil?" The music also suceeded in giving the film a creepy mood. The acting - specifically by the interview-ees, is pretty good. The main characters, while not extremely good actors, are interesting and likeable. The main narrator has a creepy sense to him. This movie is best viewed with a good imagination. You must pretend that these events are real. There is also a weird twist ending. The only reason I was dissapointed is because I was expecting something totally different.

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Bats (1999)

Awful

4 July 2000

Warning: Spoilers

Bats is a movie with a very, very, weak story and villain, and the only good part about it is the acting done by Lou Diamond Phillips. The story is simple: genetically mutated bats escape from a lab and the scientist who created them gets the help of two bat experts who get the help of the sheriff (Phillips) to hunt down their flighty foes. The special effects are bad. The only time the CG of the bat swarms look convincing is from a distance. When the bats aren't cartoonish CGI they are animatronics that look more like monsters rather than bats. In one scene, the bat expert Jimmy, says to the scientist, "If one of those bats toutches me, if it moves his head around (while saying this he rolls his head on his shoulders) and even seems like it's going to LOOK at me, I'm comin' after you!" When Jimmy is desribing the bats head movement, it seems almost like he is making fun of the way the puppet bats move around. The bats also vary in size from a regular sized bat to a large bat with a wingspan of about 4 feet! The people in this movie are idiots! An officer is cornered by a group of bats in a diner, and all he has to say, with gun pointed at them is, "Stay back, don't move!" In another diner a customer is getting mauled by a large bat, but the little kid near him doesn't notice because he's too involved in an arcade game. I could go on more about that, but I won't. The scientist character is a poor weak character (not really the actor's fault, more the writers) upon getting a hold of a bat, the scientist, stereotypically says, "I must study it!" And, (WARNING! SPOILER AHEAD!) it turns out that our beloved scientist released the bats on purpose, as he later reveals. That whole plot surprise right there is the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen. So this guy decides to be all evil and for NO REASON WHAT SO EVER, except just to make him a bad guy, he releases these aggressive, carniverous bats on a small town. Stupid. I actually kept slipping in and out of sleep during the end. This movie is terrible in most aspects. One good point in it, though is Lou Diamond Phillips, who does a very good job acting as the sheriff. Overall, avoid this movie, unless you want something that is loaded with pointless, stupid plot twists and story.

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House on Haunted Hill (1999)

Eh, so-so

4 July 2000

House on Haunted Hill has it's ups and downs. Probably more downs than ups. The beginning was chaotic and strange. The gore at some parts of the movie turned me off. I don't have a problem with gore, it's just the way it's portrayed. There are some elements of the movie that I do like, for instance I like the scenes that are just weird and creepy that get under your skin (ex. the scene where a dead doctor is scene in a security moniter walking and moving jerkily (due to frames taken out of the footage) and acting very bizzare. I also like a few of the one-liners, which were fairly funny (two of them, mainly). I watched this movie with a friend, and I mentioned that in haunted house movies like this, if the characters would just stay in the main room and relax until morning, opposed to exploring the farthest, darkest corners of the house, they might just survive the night. Movies like this have a basic formula: take a handful of characters without much knowledge of them, throw them in one general area for the whole film, and have them run around scared and trapped while things jump out and go "boo!" The history of the house being an insane asylum was kind of cool, though, but I don't know any insane asylum where the doctors cut open patients while they are still awake and can feel pain (a scene I don't particulary like, I don't enjoy seeing people suffer on screen) This movie might of been better if it would have stuck to being sublte. And I don't find CGI ghosts the least bit scary.

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8MM (1999)

Disturbing, wierd, good.

26 June 2000

If you are planning on seeing 8MM, I will first say, it is not a happy movie. This movie is very dark and ominous in nature. I'm not the kind of guy that only watches dark, somber movies - If a person is stuck to only that genre they might end up being creepy and depressed themselves. I like variety, though. In 8MM, Nicholas Cage plays Tom Wells, a detective who is hired by a rich elderly woman to investigate a film she found in her dead husband's safe that depicts what apears to be a pornography bit but ends with the girl being murdered. As Mr. Wells goes deeper into his case, he gets the assistance of Max California, an employee at an adult book store who turns out to be smarter than he appears. Tom ends up going in over his head and delves deep into the dark underworld of pornography. This movie has an excellent soundtrack that conveys the creepy sense even further. There are a few good comic relief scenes, which in a movie like this are usually welcomed. This film has some good twists, and is very interesting. The actors do a good job in this film, especially Nicholas Cage. Go see 8MM if you are in the mood for an interesting thriller with some twists and a dash of comedy.

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The Blair Witch Project (1999)

Creepy and original

24 June 2000

The Blair Witch Project is a very interesting movie. It is advertised as an actual event - "In 1994, three student filmmakers disappeard in the woods of Burketsville, Maryland while shooting a documentary. Three years later, their footage was found." A lot of people hated Blair Witch because they claimed that "I could of made that movie myself!" or that "It wasn't even scary!" Most people today are used to chop 'em up slasher movies. For fans of those movies, the usual definition of a scary movie is a movie with lots of gore and lots of things jumping out of the shadows and making you jump. Movies like these fail to have a creepiness about them. A scary movie should be subtle in most parts, mysterious, and it should get under your skin. Blair Witch does this. Our stars, Mike, Heather, and Josh, are pursued by something that is unidentifiable and mysterious. Evidence of it is heard at night, when it..or them...lets itself be heard. At one point in the film the characters are in a tent at night and hear a warped, unearthly noise. This sound alone without knowing exactly what made it is creepier than some burly man with an axe. Even the legend of the Blair Witch is unsettling. While in bed at night, I read an Blair Witch ad that had a list of occurrences involving the Blair Witch. One in where 7 men are found in the woods stretched on a big rock, disembowled and bound together by their hands and legs. Reading that gave me the creeps. In my opinion, The Blair Witch Project wasn't as "Scary as Hell" as Rolling Stone claimed it was, but it was indeed very creepy. If you plan on watching Blair Witch, watch it with the mindset that you are watching someone's home video that has gone horribly, horribly wrong. 5 out of 5 stars

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The Matrix (1999)

Stylish, fun, and smart....Whoa

24 June 2000

I first got interested in The Matrix when I saw a trailer for it on TV. It looked cool and different. I also had very little knowledge of what the story was about. I decided that this film would be interesting and gave it a try - and I'm glad I did. At first glance, The Matrix seems like your everyday dumb mindless action flick with trench coat wearing madmen. But really it is a movie that expresses a very interesting and thought-provoking story that gets in your head and asks, "Is my world really as it seems?" There is a little bit of modern mythology in The Matrix (like Star Wars) and the film also ponders about the subject of fate. The action scenes are also well-done and spread out. There are a few Kung-Fu fights, one taking place in a dojo with sunlight pouring in from high windows. There is also a gunfight that is very John Woo-esque. The action doesn't distract from the story, though, and between action sequences (there are few of them, so this doesn't qualify as an all-out action movie) we get well-acted scenes that flesh out the story. All-in-all, The Matrix is good fun, but also offers subjects that can start an interesting conversation, and give the movie a see-it-over-and-over quality. 5 out of 5 stars.

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Dogma (1999)

Funny, enjoyable movie!

24 June 2000

Dogma turned out to be a controversial movie. That's probably why it turned out to be so good. Or maybe it's just Kevin Smith's tried and true formula for movies that makes this film enjoyable. Either way, I loved Dogma. When discussing this movie on chat rooms, some people agreed with me, but some commented that this movie gave Roman Catholics a bad name. I can see how some religious people might be offended by this movie, but the director was thoughtful enough to put a note in the beginning of the movie saying not to take this film too seriously. I'd agree there, this movie is not meant to be taken seriously, it is for fun. Although I do like the 13th Apostle's (Chris Rock) comments about beliefs and ideas. This is my first Kevin Smith movie, and after seeing it, I now plan on seeing Clerks and Chasing Amy. I recommend Dogma to anyone who enjoys a movie that has memorable characters (gotta love Jay and Silent Bob!), funny one-liners, and an interesting story. 4 out of 5 stars.

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