Reviews

Another awful show with two "characters" who get excited at anything happening at all. A coin, screaming, a tube, screaming, dirt, scream. Worst of all, in episode 6 they sexualize the professor they're going to see. She's a scientist and these are two full idiots. I hate this show.

Borat did something magical, it took my preconceived notion of hospitality and of human compassion and turned it on its ear. Borat at a southern mansion, culturally ignorant, acting poorly and yet for the most part, tolerated, and more than that, at times, excused, and helped. Meeting those black boys on the corner in some anonymous urban area and getting on with them well. If you don't know Andy Kaufman's origin story for Latka, a character similar to Borat, Andy was being mugged, pretended to be a foreigner, and the muggers left him alone. One wouldn't assume that the same kind of spirit would be afforded in this age, but Borat showed that not to be true. Baron Cohen tried to get people to not like him and they refused. It was exceptional and smart, edited to show the best in people while also being outrageously funny. Bruno is the exact opposite, stupid, crass, boorish. It's Sasha Baron Cohen losing all of his humanity and the humanity of others. And he's trying so hard to shock. It's not fun when all your doing is an expose on how far you'll go, whether ill conceived or not. I have to admit that this movie is funny. Sasha is a funny person, but this movie isn't smart and it isn't sending the right message. I wish that Cohen didn't try so hard, I wish that he picked a better opponent than southern fanatics. This movie could have been so much more than stereotypes and a damn near carbon copy plot as his last film. Perhaps Cohen isn't a good enough story teller to make it happen.

A moralistic fairy tale set in modern day. Brothers Black and White are orphans and run the streets of Treasure Town, doing what Cats do best, stealing and running. The Yakuza show up and start causing concern. Leaving little Black and sort out the situation. It is unbelievable how good this film is. Nuanced interesting characters are a vehicle for a over arching moral diatribe on cities, the people in them, and how we all deal with each other. White is purity, he's naive, but has a general sense of good, which is married to his seemingly stunted educational and emotional growth. His older brother, Black, on the other hand, is smart, streetwise, good in a fight, and has lost the innocence that White still possess. And we are able to interpret events that occur during the film through both of their eyes. This film had very interesting art, childish of a sort, but designed for the sake of experimentation, and to remind us that we're in a story that is seen and narrated by children. It used a full palette of colors and symbolism to help extend the story to the viewer and it succeeded masterfully. All said, this film broke my heart in a million different beautiful ways. I loved this film, and not since Hotaru no haka (Grave of the Fireflies) has a film been able to effect me so profoundly. I know I will never forget this film. When this comes out of DVD, rent it, or, if you're lucky, run to the theater and catch this before it disappears.

In all truth, the most well planned effective and downright scary episode in the history of the show. Every part of the episode is built to come to that awful conclusion. No line or shot is wasted. This is Hitchcockian thriller at it's best. It has the very best line of dialogue ever read in a Southpark episode, Cartman's line, "let me taste the tears of unfathomable sadness" is still something that I use to this day. Excellent use of Radiohead, and the line, "he's got cancer, in his ass" is so well delivered. I hope that they put this episode in a time capsule and send it two thousand years in the future to show how genius television could be, when really applied correctly. God I love this episode. Go on the internets, youtube probably has it and watch it. Right now.

I, like most people I assume, wandered into a screening of this film because it fit the time slot and was totally obscure. I went with four other buddies and I must say we were blow away by how unbelievably terrible it was and how much fun we had at the same time. Saw it again on Saturday at the Lamelle Sunset and it was even better the second time. We spoke with John S. Rad, he's taking Dangerous Men on tour and putting out a DVD, Dangerous Men even has a myspace address, everyone should look it up, he also has a dozen more movies and some music and poetry. If anyone you know has seen this movie you will have the keen ability of telling inside jokes at the expense of Dangerous Men for a life time, which is worth it's weight in gold. To sum up, this movie is terrible and obviously John Rad had a tough time figuring out what he really wanted to do, but I feel that future projects, hopefully, can only be better and Dangerous Men is a great time at the theatre even if it's an atrociously awful film.

Other than the fact that this film fills out what ever plot holes are left, and does it in the most rudimentary way possible, there is no reason to see this film. The acting is awful, the dialog is laughable, and the action is anti-climatic to a fault. Lucas has fun never actually doing anything daring with any of the characters, I wanted so badly for Darth (Anakin) to revel in the dark side and allow himself to be consumed by evil, but it never happened, or at least the character never showed it. I constantly found myself saying, when two paths diverged in the plot, "No, Lucas wouldn't do it that way, it's much to obvious"; every time I was disappointed at how right I could be, and how unwilling Lucas was to take chances. This was the last movie, Lucas could have done whatever he wanted as long as a few things fell into place and he didn't he played it safe and unoriginal every time, leading to a really timid and lackluster end. I really feel like the good reviews given by the media are simply because there is no point in hurting the man's feelings, we're at the end, it's over, it isn't like he's going to continue making films now, except maybe "Indy", and if we're lucky, he'll stay the hell away from that. Lucas is a bad writer and a worse director, what I can't help but notice is that Ewan Mcgregor and Natalie Portman can act, I've seen it, but in this movie there just terrible. I cannot fathom a way to blame anyone but Lucas, for their shortcomings. I think that it's obvious that the best Star Wars movie, "The Empire Strikes Back" was not helmed or written by Lucas, and it's for that reason.

I can't honestly believe that if a twenty something year old Lucas shopped around these three first episodes now he wouldn't be able to make any of the movies, let alone all three, or he'd just be laughed out of town. Do you really think anyone in their right mind would have green lit Jar-Jar Binks? Please. Final analysis is as follows: See it, if and only if you're a fan or really don't care about what Lucas has done to these characters and this story, if not, wait until DVD. Brandon Gilbrech

I have always been a big fan of Frank Miller's comic books, and I am not disappointed by his writing here, which is as solid as anything else he's done, but what is surprising is how well the visual side of things was done, but I suppose that a lot of credit would have to go to co-director Robert Rodriguez. Besides co-direction Rodriguez also shot, edited, and helped score the film. The acting was top notch with great turns by Clive Owen, Mickey Rourke, Bruce Willis, and Benicio Del Toro, but I felt that the Ladies in the film Rosario Dawson, Britney Murphy and Jessica Alba, had little more to do than be damsels in distress and really, really, effective eye candy. The place where the acting and writing really shines is in the voice over dialog, it seems as if plucked right out of a 1950's film noir, the right mix of grit and nerve with some tenderness and a feeling of wanting to do something right. There are three vignettes in the film each focusing on Rourke, Owen, and Willis, and they all fit together eventually, as any serpentine plot should! What I really appreciated was that while each was from different sides of law enforcement, each seem to have a similar thought pattern, manner of speech, and ideology, showing that while their methods are different essentially these are just guys down on their luck and looking to help somebody out. Overall I though this film was really strong, excellent use of color and sound to help give a comic book feel and look and excellent performances, unfortunately only from the males in this case, and an overall cohesiveness in a pretty disjointed narrative. I really hope that Miller decides to put out another film and if there is a God it will be Dark Knight Returns. Brandon

In Mel Gibson's "Passion" We are related the last twelve hours of Jesus Christ life, his trials and tribulations. This film is supposed to be one of the most controversial ever. However, I cannot, in my right mind, call this a film, because most the characters are never properly introduced, almost no background is given on any of the characters, except for Christ, Pontious Pilate, the governor of wherever the story takes place (I was never quite sure) Judas, the betrayer, and Jesus's mother. Apparently, Gibson decided that everyone already knows enough that everyone will understand what exactly is going on, and that he doesn't have to bother with setting who the characters are. The cinematography and direction were atrocious, a cavalcade of slow motion shots and close-ups when there was absolutely no reason for them, it seemed only to break the momentum of the film. On that note I'd like to point out that Mel Gibson did an excellent job of breaking down whatever forward momentum he might have built up by constantly seguing into flashbacks, which were altogether unneccisary, right at the climax of a sequence or scene. The majority of the film is the depection of Christ's torture before his cruxcifiction. He is beaten, spit on, whipped, spiked, hung, torn, made to wear a crown of thorns and speared. The unending amount of gore in this film is completely unjust and unwatchable. If it was meant to inspire the audience to believe that Christ had undying belief in what he is, it failed, I found it only to inspire wretching, nausea, and disgust. Throughout the film Christ was subject attack after unrelenting attack. The reason why the story and the characters were never fully developed or understood was because eighty percent of the film is Christ's unabating punishment for his claims of Godhood. I found only one redemable quality of this film, Pontius Pilate, he was the only member of the cast that I thought performed well, and invoked sympathy, because of the position that he was put into. He didn't want to kill what he believed to be an innocent, albeit crazy, man, however he knew that a wrong move would led to a riot, and a riot would lead to his death.

Perhaps this movie will invoke people to find God or Christianity, I do not believe so, I think it will only lead people to question why someone of a religious nature would want to glorify hate and destruction. Much like a television Christmas special that denounces Santa Claus until it is revealed in the end that it wasn't the kooky neighbor dressed in a big red suit, redeeming everything, Passion cannot tell a story of hate and pain and then redeem itself with Christ begging for the forgiveness of his enemies and a few poorly timed flashbacks to make this at all redeemable. This is Mel Gibsons' beliefs wrapped up in a bloody little package and rammed it down the throats of his audience.

This film was made with such breathtaking care that I don't expect to see another film that will move me with such intensity. The story line is told with painstaking detail, and that's what makes this movie so poignant, you understand the characters, through the little details, so well, that you cannot help but feel that what you perceive is what these characters are feeling. I literally cried throughout 15 of the films' 90 minute runtime, not just a tear in the eye "oh that's too bad," but sobbing "OH MY GOD WHY, WHY DOES THIS HAVE TO HAPPEN?!" I remember a comment kept running through my head, "this is not fair, it's not fair it had to happen to them, it's not their fault, dammit it's not their fault." This film is a representation of how good dramatic anime can be, if used correctly. There are no kung fu fights, or mysterious dragons, only reality. Such horrible wonderful reality that one will find that they cannot think about war in the same way as they did before. I know that this was the greatest war movie I have ever seen. It also might just be the greatest film ever. See it, don't walk, run, you must see this film.

Brandon Gilbrech