Change Your Image
simpeton
Reviews
The Shining (1980)
Absolutely Worthless
Do not waste your time on this movie. It is one of the best examples of a botched translation from print to screen ever. It has been inexcusably "Kubrickized" to make it fit in more easily with the rest of Stanley Kubrick's body of work.
Kubrick takes the basic idea from the book-- and I do mean the most absolutely basic outline of the story-- and changes it into something that is not even remotely scary. In the book, the Hotel itself is the fourth main character, slowly driving Jack Torrance insane. In this utter waste of film, Jack was crazy when they got there, and the isolation from the outside world is what takes him over the edge. In this bastardized version, there is no point in having Danny possessed of psychic powers, nor of making the Hotel itself haunted. Those two points, which should be the two most important facts of the story, instead take a backseat to a very predictable, very generic story of an already unstable man finally snapping.
Do yourself a favor, and instead of this absolute SIN of a film, watch the made-for-tv mini-series starring Steven Weber. It is much more faithful to the book, and therefore a much better and well worked story.
Resident Evil (2002)
Really, REALLY, Bad
The two main things about this movie that bothered me the most are as follows:
1: They never established a sense of utter hopelessness. In any Zombie flick this is the key. Zombies are dumb, clumsy, and slow. The only way to make them a true threat is to have your heroes in as small and unescapable place as possible, and to have HORDES of zombies for miles and miles as far as the eye can see. It has to seem hopeless. While it was clear from the start that at least 2/3 of the supposedly highly trained paramilitary team was expendable, at no time was Milla Jovavich in any danger. There are scenes in this movie where five or six soldiers are being swarmed by Zombies, and despite all their training and vast weaponry, they can do little. Then Ms. Jovavich, in her ripped up nightgown and with no weapons at all, drops in on them and goes Bruce Lee for three minutes, and, there ya go, no more Zombie threat. BULL!!
2. While they did seem to spend a decent amount on the special effects for the zombies, the main Mutated Beast that comes at them in the end looked like something Ray Harryhausen might have done for one of his movies in the 60's. Which is not a slight to Mr. Harryhausen at all. Clash of the Titans and Jason and the Argonauts are two of my favorites, and a documentary on Mr. Harryhausen put me in awe of his talents. But the claymation-like movements of the Mutant in this movie really clashed with all the rest of the high tech goings on.
All in all, if you want a decent Zombie movie, go rent "Night of the Living Dead" or "Zombie", an unnoficial Italian sequel that came out before Mr. Romero came out with "Dawn of the Dead". If you go with "Resident Evil", you will regret it before you finish the movie.
Extreme Championship Wrestling: The Best of Cactus Jack (2001)
The Man Who Brought True Hardcore Wrestling to the WWF
In the early 90's bought the WWF and WCW were borrowing ideas, characters, matches, talent and entire angles from a small independent organization based in Philladelphia called ECW. WCW realized early on how much of an impact the lightheavyweight talent was having on one of the toughest-to-please wrestling crowds in the country and quickly instituted its "Cruiserweight" division, hiring away several of ECW's most talented performers in the process to carry it. The WWF saw that ECW had been having wild success with more adult oriented storylines and decided to scrap its own more candy coated image to usher in the new era of "Attitude".
Both feds also implemented "Hardcore" divisions, in which the "rules" are tossed out and a stiffer, more violent match style is used. The problem was that most of the guys both of the "Big Two" feds had on the payroll were not willing to put their bodies on the line the way the ECW talent, who had nowhere to go but up, were willing to do.
Although neither fed's "Hardcore" division ever did more than flirt with the greatness that regularly happened in the ECW rings, the WWF did realize that they dad one Ace up their sleeve: a guy by the name of Mick Foley. He was wrestling as Mankind for the WWF at the time, and had been for the past couple years. But prior to that he had been known all over the world as the crazy, maniacal, show stealing Cactus Jack. Foley was a bit too oddly shaped to ever be a muscle bound type, and a bit too clumsy to be a technical master, but he understood better than most what it takes to make a really GOOD match, and he was willing to do anything, including putting his career on the line with insane spots every night, to make his matches the best on the card. In Japan he regularly competed in the "Barbed Wire Death Matches" and all their variations including exploding rings, thumb tacks, broken glass, and even fire. He was thought so hightly of in the Land of the Rising Sun that he was put into the "King of the Death Matches" tournament for the IWA promotion and, in a violent finale, won the tourney by defeating his idol Terry Funk in "No Rope Barbed Wire Exploding Ring Timebomb" match.
Needless to say, the man loved wrestling. And nowhere else did that fact shine thru so much as in ECW. He acheived a rare combination of being able to put on the best match of the night no matter who else was on the card, and the ability to get on the mic and cut a promo that would literally send chills down your spine.
All of the great matches are here: Cactus vs Sabu in a battle of two insane characters who both define "hardcore" in their own way.
All of the stuff Cactus did to get Mikey Whipwreck over is on here: the tag team championship, the feud with Public Enemy, the eventual breakup, and Cactus' last ECW match, a classic AGAINST Mikey.
All of the promos for every angle are here, including the classid and trend setting "Anti-Hardcore" series, which were perhaps his best ever, and almost definitely the best the sport of wrestling has ever seen (eat your heart out Rock, you've never been this good on the mic and you never will).
If you came into the sport after 1995, or have only seen Foley in his WWF career, you owe it to yourself to check this out. It will truly blow your mind.
Moulin Rouge! (2001)
Read Your Greek Mythology, People
To all the uninformed people who are trashing this enthralling movie for ripping off the story of whatever movie you THINK it got its story from, and to all the folks who think certain directors of past films might be offended at this film taking liberties with "their" stories, get your facts straight before you commit them to be printed for all to read. "Moulin Rouge" stays totally faithful to its TRUE source of inspiration: the myth of Orpheus from Greek Mythology. I'm not even gonna explain it for you. Get off your lazy cans and go read it for yourselves. They've taken Orpheus and his ill fated bride, moved them to a fantasy location loosely based on turn of the century Paris, and simply told their story in that fashion. Look it up.
Unbreakable (2000)
Either You Get It, or You Don't
The way to think about this movie as you are watching it, is to imagine it as a comic book brought to film. Not like X-Men or even Superman, where it's all action with little attention to detail or story. It's hard for people who don't read comics and look down on them in general to believe, but there ARE a lot of comic books out there that are more cerebral than any book or novel they ever read. This is THAT type of comic.
Yes, a few of the plot points are far fetched, but that's the way it is with a comic book, or even a novel. It's called "suspension of disbelief" and it means that you just accept the story and don't nitpick every minor detail. If you can't do that, then you will never enjoy ANY work of fiction, no matter how High Brow. "How could it work out that the two main characters just happen to live in the same city?" "How did Elijah's physical therapist just happen to be David's wife?" Because it is a story and it works out better for the story if those things happen that way.
The other thing I see most people questioning is this "How could he have never been sick, never been injured, and not know it?"
That one actually has a very simple psychological answer that has nothing to do with fiction. It's called repression of the past. Your mind is an amazing thing. It can have all kinds of knowledge stored up inside it, that you don't access because a decision is made by you subconsciously that you DON"T want to know, or remember. Have you ever met someone who was sexually abused as a child, but didn't even know it until they were thirty? I have. It's because on some level their mind decided they could either have that in their head all the time, or the knowledge of the abuse could be pushed to a back corner of the mind, never to be thought of again. It happens all the time.
Bruce Willis' character repeats throughout the movie "I'm just a regular guy. I'm just a regular guy." That's the same thing his mind has been repeating all these years, convincing him he was normal until he had no knowledge of the fact that he wasn't. The more Elijah made him see the truth, the more David was trying to convince himself other wise. He wanted a normal life. He wanted to be with his girlfriend for the rest of his life. And so his mind cut off any knowledge he might have had of his true nature. It made him blind to the fact that he had never been sick. It made him blind to the fact that he had never been hurt. It is even hinted at in the flashback sequence that the decision to fake the injury after the accident was made subconsciously.
The bottom line about this movie is: either you get it, or you don't. You don't have to be well versed in comic books to enjoy this movie. But you do have to be able take in all the details. There are NO insignificant details in this movie. Everything that is said or done is done for a reason, and leads to something else later in the movie. If you don't have the temperament to be able to take it all in, you won't understand or like this movie.
The Shining (1980)
Absolutely Worthless
Do not waste your time on this movie. It is one of the best examples of a botched translation from print to screen ever. It has been inexcusably "Kubrickized" to make it fit in more easily with the rest of Stanley Kubrick's body of work.
Kubrick takes the basic idea from the book-- and I do mean the most absolutely basic outline of the story-- and changes it into something that is not even remotely scary. In the book, the Hotel itself is the fourth main character, slowly driving Jack Torrance insane. In this utter waste of film, Jack was crazy when they got there, and the isolation from the outside world is what takes him over the edge. In this bastardized version, there is no point in having Danny possessed of psychic powers, nor of making the Hotel itself haunted. Those two points, which should be the two most important facts of the story, instead take a backseat to a very predictable, very generic story of an already unstable man finally snapping.
Do yourself a favor, and instead of this absolute SIN of a film, watch the made-for-tv mini-series starring Steven Weber. It is much more faithful to the book, and therefore a much better and well worked story.
Hannibal (2001)
Vastly Superior to "Silence of the Lambs"
And I don't say that with any intent of taking shots at "Silence...", I think it is one of the best psychological thrillers of this era, but "Hannibal" is that much better. Julianne Moore blows Jodie Foster out of the water. She has much more range of emotion and believable acting skills than the far overratted miss Foster, and I knew that her Starling would be more interesting to watch than Foster's was, and I was right. Hopkins was superb, also as expected, showing Lecter's trademark intelligence and class, all while giving him an unexpected sense of humor.
This movie has a much better pace to it than "Silence..", never letting up from the opening credits right up to the final "cut", so to speak. A lot of people forget that "Silence of the Lambs", while great, has several parts in it where you are basically waiting for this scene to end so you can get to the next. There are no such moments in Hannibal, in which each scene is enjoyable in itself, and each scene is constantly setting up the next. Each scene raises the bar from the previous, so that by the end, you are so caught up in it that you don't even realize you've been sitting there for two hours.
In this age of so called "horror" movies that are basically comedic versions of the 80's "slasher" flicks, and where we rarely ever see true horror any more, it is nice to see a nice intelligent psychological horror movie that gets to you not because of the mindless violence and killing, but for the intellect and intelligence. Hannibal Lecter is not a mindless mass murdere, he is a gentleman at all times, a murderer who does not kill anyone and everyone who crosses his path, he is a connoiseur, who chooses his victims for various reasons, not the least of which seems sometimes to be to simply remove them from society. That is the truly disturbing part, when you are watching a man do the things to people that the Dr. does, and you can't really say you feel sorry for them, because the world would probably be better off without their presence.
My Fair Lady (1964)
Absolutely Enchanting
The wife of a friend of mine loaned me her copy of this movie, and after one watch it became my favorite musical. The story is just divine, and is so enchanting that you hardly notice the time going by. The performances are magnificent. The correlation between the changes in the two main characters -- being of course, Hepburn and Harrison, is partcularly well done. Ms. Doolittle goes from a "guttersnipe" seemingly in one frame, meaning that you notice the exact moment she finally "gets it" and begins to act like a lady. Harrison, who had obviously mastered this role with the years he portrayed it on Broadway, is infinitely more subtle. The first time you watch it, you aren't sure of his feelings for Eliza until the moment he hears her voice after he thinks she's left him. He says "Eliza!" with such emotion and displays such a look of utter joy on his face. On repeated viewings you will be able to pick up little hints he had been dropping all along that pointed to the fact that he was smitten, but the first time around, the wonderfully woven tapestry of characters and songs do an effective job of distracting you from what may or may not be in the cards for Eliza Doolittle and Prof. Henry Higgins. Why in God's name this movie is only at #244 on the 250 list is beyond me. It is easily in MY top ten.
Shakespeare in Love (1998)
Flawless
An excellent film, without flaw, though they did omit Shakespear's deal with Morpheus, that he be given the power to write stories that would be remembered long past his time on earth, in exchange for writing two plays devoted to dreams, namely: "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and "The Tempest". But, one could hardly expect them to include that detail, as it would have clashed with the rest of the story. Still, all in all, a first class movie.
Dune (1984)
This is what happens when you let David Lynch turn a great book into a movie
The books of Dune are great, they get a little involved after the first two or three, but they are still good. So it was a good idea to have the movie focus mainly on only the first book, entitled, aptly enough "Dune". But then they decided to let David Lynch direct it. When I heard that, I knew it would be a waste of film that had little to do with the books, except to use something almost resembling the storyline from the book to ensure that the folks who read the book would come and see the movie. In reality, all they did was cash in on the name. Much like Stanley Kubrick, David Lynch is a very egotistical director who does not mind cashing in on a book to ensure big box office figures, but then changes the story as much as possible to make it "his own". Dune the movie is not even the shell of Dune the book. Just read it again and picture it in your head. You won't regret it.
Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999)
It's a BEGINNING, People!
For all the people who are complaining about this movie, I would just like to point out that you are the people who never cared for the other three in the first place. You just got caught up in the "hype" and didn't want to be left out. So you jumped on the "cool" bandwagon and started talking about how always loved the first three, thinking you had us fans fooled, but we knwe. You know how? We ask you what you thought of the Phantom Menade after you watched it. And when someone started saying how "it didn't go anywhere" or "it just kind of ended with no real resolution" or "JarJar Binks was nothing but comic relief", we know you are just jumping on the bandwagon.
If you people will take the time to watch the original three, particularly Star Wars, you will realize how obvious you really were. This is not one movie on its own. It is Act I. The first trilogy was that way as well. If you watch Star Wars on its own, it doesn't hold up as well. If you watch it realizing it is just the beginnig of one long movie consisting of three individual Movie length sections, it works completely. The same holds true for the Phantom Menace. It is only the beginning of one long movie, to be shown in three parts. It introduces the characters, sets up the basic plot, and gets you thru the first segment of a longer story. The first trilogy was one long story how Anakin Skywalker redeemed himself. This trilogy is the story of his original fall from Grace. That is how you should view it. I mean, you don't read just the book of Genesis in the Bible and just say "Well, this really don't seem like it's gonna go anywhere." It has to be taken as a whole, or at least a small part of a larger story until the whole thing can be taken in.
As far as JarJar goes, of course he is the comic relief. What do you think R2 and C3PO were in the originals for? Sure, they saved the day a few times, particularly R2, but for the most part they were there to make you laugh. Same with the Ewoks.
Oh well, that's my little explanation for all you bandwagon jumpers out there. But don't worry, when the other two films come out, I'm sure we'll see you again, telling us about the masterful way this story was told across three movies, and all the detail that allowed them to put into the characters
2 Days in the Valley (1996)
Flawless
This is one of the most immediately engaging movies I have ever watched. It pulls you into its little world immediately. With a plot two complex to try to fully explain here, it successfully weaves the lives of a handful of Beverly Hills' citizens, who could not be more different from each other. Two cops, one of them still kind of wet behind the ears, the other experienced but almost over the deep end with his personal problems. Two hitmen, one of them cold and heartless, the other more or less a good guy, who kills people for a living. Two women, one a calculating vixen, the other an Olympic track hopeful. A nurse. An out-of-work actor. A millionaire and his abused assistant. And a dog. At the start of the movie, they were miles apart, literally and figuratively. By the end, they will all be wrapped up in one hell of an entertaining mess.
The Shining (1997)
Far Better than Kubrick's Flop
THIS is the Shining. This is the movie the Shining was meant to be made into. No matter what any uninformed people may tell you, this is the movie that captures the Shining. The folks who made this movie actually seem to have read the book, which is more than mr. Kubrick saw fit to do. The story that is in this movie is the story that is in the book. The hotel is alive, and feeding on young Danny. Jack, who is actually presented in this version as the loving, caring father and husband he was never allowed to be by Kubrick, is slowly being driven to madness by the Overlook itself. A good part of the story is a battle within Jack between himself and his madness, being manipulated by the hotel, which is able to use Danny's formidable powers to make itself far more powerful than normal. This is the psychologiical masterpiece that Kubrick's waste of film was not and should have been. If you honestly liked the book, you hated that movie, and you know it. Therefore, this is the movie for you.
The Shining (1980)
Absolutely Worthless
Do not waste your time on this movie. It is one of the best examples of a botched translation from print to screen ever. It has been inexcusably "Kubrickized" to make it fit in more easily with the rest of Stanley Kubrick's body of work.
Kubrick takes the basic idea from the book-- and I do mean the most absolutely basic outline of the story-- and changes it into something that is not even remotely scary. In the book, the Hotel itself is the fourth main character, slowly driving Jack Torrance insane. In this utter waste of film, Jack was crazy when they got there, and the isolation from the outside world is what takes him over the edge. In this bastardized version, there is no point in having Danny possessed of psychic powers, nor of making the Hotel itself haunted. Those two points, which should be the two most important facts of the story, instead take a backseat to a very predictable, very generic story of an already unstable man finally snapping.
Do yourself a favor, and instead of this absolute SIN of a film, watch the made-for-tv mini-series starring Steven Weber. It is much more faithful to the book, and therefore a much better and well worked story.