Reviews

I first saw "Song of the South" when Disney released it in theatres in 1986. I was 9 at the time and loved it.

Since then, with the movie available on videotape or DVD, I've always wondered whether the movie contained horrible content that went over my head as a kid.

Well now it is 2011, I downloaded the movie on torrent (since Disney won't make it available legally), and I screened it with a few friends. Like many other reviewers here, I was shocked by how harmless and sweet this movie actually is. If you've seen Treasure Island or Mary Poppins, you know the general tone of this movie. Uncle Remus is an awesome character, dignified and creative, and the animated sequences with Brer Rabbit, Brer Fox and Brer Bear are as laugh-out-loud funny as any Loony Tunes cartoon.

Yes, the movie presents a dated and saccharine view of life on plantation for African-Americans. Some of the dialects used are stereotypical, though nothing worse than you'll find in a Martin Lawrence or Tyler Perry movie. But while the movie convey common stereotypes of the 1940s, there is nothing racist or mean-spirited here.

Disney obviously shouldn't release this as if there is nothing controversial about it. Feel free to install a title card at the beginning explaining that the movie is from the 1940s and contains stereotypes that will appear dated now. But damn, release this movie! It really is a classic tale of imagination and friendship.

Wow, I just caught this movie through Netflix. My God this is an awesome horror film. Put it right up there with Wolf Creek, Hostel, Saw -- actually put it above those movies! This is obviously indebted to Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but it is so stylish and so gory that it stands on its own. Actress Karina Testa turns in the best scream queen performance since Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween. Unbelievable intensity. All young actresses should study that performance if they want to work in horror.

Check out this movie. Definitely a surprisingly good time, especially the last hour.

I wasn't expecting much from this film, but I ended up loving it quite a bit. It's a great kid's adventure, lots of mystery and action, good character development, and plenty of cool settings.

Bill Murray and Tim Robbins do a fine job in their roles, but they are mostly supporting cast. It's the two kids who are the real heart of the story. I also love how the filmmakers created an entirely plausible distant future where beauty still thrived despite crumbling infrastructure. Above all, this is a movie about hope for the future.

If you are looking for a good adventure similar to THE GOONIES, check this out. Great for kids, and great for folks of all ages who enjoy light adventure.

This is a must-see for every American. Those denouncing the film, many of whom haven't even seen it, are the same sad sacks who think that Fox News is really "fair and balanced". This is Moore's best film to date, and he went to great lengths to assure that everything in the movie is factual. If he told any lies in this movie, trust me, the Wall Street Journal and the rest of the right wing media would be all over it. I don't agree with all of Moore's conclusions, but I do agree that George W. Bush is the worst president this country has had since Richard Nixon.

See this movie! Those of us who have followed the news closely over the last four years will not be surprised by the facts presented here, but most people (like my brother) will be shocked to learn the extent of Bush's incompetence, corruption, and hypocrisy. We must vote this guy out of office in November. If you aren't registered, do so. And vote November 2nd! Take our country back!

"Fahrenheit 9/11" will stand as a powerful document of this point in history. You don't have to agree with everything in it, but it does force you to confront the harsh realities of war and politics. For that I give it 10 out of 10****.

This is a cheap, unwatchable, creepy, sometimes hilarious rip-off of "E.T.", done Turkish-style. The story concerns a three-foot alien who gets stranded on Earth and befriends a young boy. The plot is completely derivative of Spielberg's yarn, and the special effects have to be seen to be believed. The alien character, named "Badi", is made up of a midget inside an extremely disturbing rubber mask. A far cry from the cute E.T. that we all know and love.

I saw an undubbed version with no subtitles, so I can't comment on the dialogue or plot intricacies. The story is very slow moving, with only a few memorable scenes to keep it from being a totally wasted rental. I'm not sure if this was a hit in Turkey back in '83, but I feel very sorry for their filmgoing public if it was. This is worth seeing only for the horrifying rubber-faced Badi, a creature that would scare any child no matter how curious and open-minded.

I have to admit that I am a big fan of the first "Cage" movie, mainly for Lou Ferrigno's great performance as the simple-minded Billy Thomas. Billy is a brain-damaged Vietnam vet who turns into a killing machine when forced into deadly cage matches. But even after viewing the original, nothing could have prepared me for the violence and brutality of "Cage II: The Arena of Death".

This is one of those rare sequels that is superior to the original. Lou Ferrigno, somehow even more physically intimidating than he was during his Hulk days, destroys a half dozen opponents in some of the most viscous cage matches you will ever see. I have never seen Lou, or any other actor, look as scary as he does during these fights. The movie is cheap in quality but epic in scope, including everything from Lou's romance with a Chinese whore to a shootout involving the FBI to a helicopter being blown out of the sky by an Asian karate-do master with a rocket launcher. Even Reb Brown is palatable, thanks to a very funny comic role. The movie has a terrible ending that doesn't resolve the movie's major conflict, but that is the only serious flaw in an otherwise highly enjoyable film.

If you can find this in a video store, rent it. Few movies are as enjoyable as this, and the cage matches beat out anything you will find on Ultimate Fighting Championship.

I was really looking forward to this movie. I'd seen the poster in an old French textbook (don't ask why) and it looked quite awesome. I'd never seen an Indian film before, and I figured an Indian action movie from the 1980s could be great. So last month I purchased the Karma DVD online.

Two words: big disappointment.

I don't know if all Indian movies are like this, but the photography was terrible, the acting was cheesy, the songs are incredibly generic (they all sound the same to my western ears), and the action is TERRIBLE. The movie has a few good explosions, and lots of guys get gunned down, but the stunts are third rate (at best!). The director doesn't handle the story or the action with any sort of style or exuberance. The movie has only one redeeming quality, and that's the actor with the black beard. He's a real badass, and he nearly pulls this movie from the brink with his incredible Bronson/Eastwood-esque performance.

If the Indians want to make movies like Hollywood, they need to trim their scripts down and learn how to direct. I still want to see Sholay, but if that's as bad as this movie then I won't be putting any more Indian films at the top of my list.

This is a cheap, lackluster Spaghetti western that never manages to develop any suspense. The director has no style, the acting is stiff, and the action scenes are poorly shot. In fact, the photography is bad overall. Some say this is an influence on "High Plains Drifter", but in fact it is yet another rip off of Leone's films and "Django".

I say skip this film and go rent "The Great Silence". That's a much more interesting Spaghetti Western from about the same time. Better yet, rent "Keoma". "Django the Bastard" has some of the right elements, but it is just too derivative.

I almost fell asleep watching this movie, despite being a huge Sergio Leone fan. Steiger sounds Cuban rather than Mexican, Coburn loses his Irish accent every time he raises his voice, and the action scenes are a big disappointment. The "Dollars" trilogy and "Once Upon a Time in the West" are not only four of the best Westerns ever made, they are four of the best films ever made. Period. But "Duck You Sucker" aka "Fistful of Dynamite" isn't in the same league. It's no wonder Leone gave up on the genre and didn't direct another movie for thirteen years.

Leone's trademark style, with breathtaking visuals and intense, brooding characters is completely missing from this film. The story doesn't have any focus, and there's a whole lot of bad dialogue. The film actually has more in common with Leone's plodding debut, the abysmal "Colossus of Rhodes", than it does with his Eastwood/Bronson westerns. No style, no substance, and none of the great humor of his previous films, I strongly suggest you skip this and go rent "Keoma" instead. Now there's a real 1970s Spaghetti Western.

I saw this many years ago on AMC. I barely remember the story, but I do remember that it was a very effective piece of noir. I've wanted to see it again, but it is extremely hard to come by. It isn't on video or DVD, and it rarely appears at revival theatres. If you ever have the chance to catch this on AMC or TCM, do whatever you can to see it. I definitely put it up there with "Detour" and "They Walked By Night". Great stuff.

"Catch Me If You Can" is easily Spielberg's best film since "Saving Private Ryan", and his best comedy ever. The film is a funny, exciting, adventurous journey into the world of conman extraordinaire Frank Abagnale Jr. If you don't know who he is now, you will after seeing this movie.

Truthfully, I wasn't expecting much going into this. Spielberg's films have become so premeditated recently, with just the right angle, just the right piece of music and just the right look of awe on the actors' faces, that his films haven't been truly enjoyable for some time. He's like a novelist who, despite great diction and flawless punctuation, has lost his touch when it comes to story and character. With "Catch Me If You Can", Spielberg has finally loosened up and let the story take center stage. It's an understated but mesmerizing success. I even forgot that I was watching a Steven Spielberg film, which is a sign of how good it is.

Christopher Walken, who did a Q&A after the screening, said that this movie was filmed very quickly. Maybe that's why Spielberg didn't burden the movie with too much style -- he didn't have time to.

If you can't wait for the next two Matrix films to come out, go see "Equilibrium" immediately. It basically wraps up the entire Matrix trilogy into one high octane film. Although "Equilibrium" is extremely derivative in much of its plot and subject matter, it is nonetheless the best science fiction film of 2002 (easily beating out the uninvolving 'Minority Report' and the cerebral 'Solaris'). Like many others, I hadn't heard of the movie until I saw it was playing at my local theatre. What a pleasant surprise.

Hollywood has forgotten how to make great sci-fi. This movie is a throwback to the period between "Blade Runner" and "Total Recall" when we had some great product coming to theatres. This flick does steal from a variety of books and movies (1984, Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451, Matrix, etc.), but it has such energy, such enthusiasm, and such a sense of narrative maturity that it makes up for such lackings. Add to that great performances by Christian Bale, Sean Pertwee, and Sean Bean, incredibly exciting and hilarious gun battles, and a variety of important themes, and you've got a film that is definitely worth seeing.

This is a sequel to Jeffrey Obrow's atrociously bad film, "Bram Stoker's Legend of the Mummy". If you haven't seen that one, don't! It is a shockingly bad piece of filmmaking, not bad in the humorous, Ed Wood sense, but booooring and bad. Low budget, cheap effects, incoherent storyline, horrible acting, the works. But apparently, enough people mistook it for the big budget "Mummy" film for it to sell a decent amount of copies. So what did they do? They went ahead and made a sequel.

The first movie was in the IMDB's bottom 100 list for about a year. Now, the sequel has made it into that list as well. This may be the first time two movies in a series have been ranked as among the worst 100 films of all time. That's quite an accomplishment. In fact, that's the only accomplishment worth noting about these two films. I have long considered "Legend of the Mummy" to be one of the worst films I have ever seen, but this sequel is right up there with it. In fact, this one is even worse because at least the first one had Louis Gossett and a semi-decent nudity shot. There is nothing redeeming about this sequel.

Do not rent this movie! Do not buy it! Avoid it like the plague!

Although technically competent, this thriller in no way lives up to the precedents set by "Manhunter" and "Silence of the Lambs". Yes, it's better than the incredibly inept "Hannibal", but that doesn't mean anything in my book. A lot of movies are better than "Hannibal". A lot of BAD movies are better than "Hannibal". Including this one.

If you haven't seen this movie, skip it. Go rent "Manhunter" instead. It's a much better adaptation of the novel, imbued with the stylish touch of director Michael Mann. Brett Ratner's "Red Dragon" is an unambitious adaptation that stays true to book on a literal level, while forgetting to include all the character turmoil that makes these kinds of movies compelling. Here's a good analogy: which adaptation of "The Shining" was better -- Kubrick's version with Jack Nicholson, or the Stephen King-approved TV miniseries from a few years ago? Kubrick's, of course. The miniseries stayed closer to the book, as does "Red Dragon", but it didn't have style, it didn't have a soul, and it wasn't scary. "Red Dragon" shares all of these problems. It isn't the kind of movie you will think about after you leave the theatre.

Here's my specific complaints about the movie:

Edward Norton was completely miscast. He doesn't come across as a tough, tormented FBI agent with an ability (or should I say a "curse") to empathize with serial killers. Instead he seems like a smart but wimpy guy who isn't really sure why he is here. He isn't a haunted character at all. William Petersen was perfect in this role, and I can imagine plenty of other leading men who could take it on. Edward Norton's a great actor, but he doesn't fit.

Ralph Fiennes isn't scary. The movie spends more time empathizing with him, and showing him to be an okay guy, than it does establishing how horrible he is. We see him romance Emily Watson, even bringing her to a zoo so she can pet (or should I say grope) a sleeping tiger. He is a killer because he was abused, of course, and the only two people we actually see him kill are unlikable people anyway. The two families that he kills are forgotten by the middle of the movie. I'm not saying bad guys should be 100% evil, but by the end of the movie I thought he just a few psychiatry sessions away from being normal again. Compare that to Tom Noonan in "Manhunter" -- no amount of therapy would fix that dude, only a well-aimed bullet.

The movie has no visual flair. Nice colors, nice composition, but the visuals don't have any depth or reverberance. The burning wheelchair scene is incredibly bland.

Hopkins is better than he was in "Hannibal", but he still hams it up. This character just isn't scary any more. Still, he'd be an amusing party guest.

This is a fantastic documentary about gun violence in America. What I found fascinating is that the movie does not preach to the audience or try to tell you how to think. Moore presents facts, shows real life clips, and interviews a variety of people to dissect the subject matter. He doesn't provide any answers, and he allows the audience to come up with its own answers. For me, the movie strongly points out how the constant focus on violence during local newscasts causes Americans to think that the world is much more violent than it is, and much more dangerous, and for that reason Americans become more violent themselves.

Some might say that this movie is distasteful, because it dares to take on such subjects as Columbine and 9/11, but Moore has a lot of compassion for the victims and is 100% on their side. This is America, an artist should be allowed to create a thoughtful piece on such important, tragic events to see why they happened and what it means about our country. Everyone in American should go see this thought-provoking film.

Looks like a bunch of hack writers took a dump on a screenplay, and then Tim Burton filmed it. You can't call this intelligent sci-fi, it is too generic and moronic for that. The ending is clearly trying to one-up the ending in the original film, but it makes absolutely no sense. At least the ending in the original film A) Explained the history of the planet and B) Left you with a powerful message. This "remake" is a waste of time for everyone involved, and a waste of money for anyone who shelled out $8 to see it.

Don't get me wrong. I like Tim Burton. But since ED WOOD, he hasn't made a decent film. He's lost his touch big time, and this film is the prime example. Mark Wahlberg has been good in other movies, but here he is a joke. And that Estella Warren chick -- How does she get acting jobs? The special effects weren't bad but this film has no style, no substance, only flash and glitter and some bad dialogue. This is not a movie anyone will remember fondly twenty years from now.

I haven't seen this since 1987, but just the fact that I remember it so fondly means that it had an impression on me. This was an entertaining, finely crafted movie that shows how Houdini picked up on magic during his teen years. This is a good companion piece to the other TV film, "Young Sherlock Holmes". Both are fun and well worth watching. I only wish this one was available on video.

Stallone has really outdone himself. If you thought Cobra or The Specialist or Assassins was bad, you need to see Get Carter. This is bottom of the barrel trash. The crappy script, the incompetent directing, the bad acting, the incoherent action and nonexistent plot -- personally I am baffled as to the preponderance of people on the IMDB who think this was a good film. Maybe they watched the 1970s version on accident. Stallone should be able to find much better scripts than this, and as we saw with DRIVEN he shouldn't try to write them himself. DO NOT rent this movie, DO NOT pay money to see it, DO NOT waste your time.

I'm sorry to admit that I couldn't even make it through the entire 2 and 1/2 hours of this film. Usually I have high tolerance. But essentially, nothing happens for the first hour and fifteen minutes. We just see the actors mugging for the cameras and trying to look complex and emotional. There is sparse dialogue and the usual attention to style over substance that foreign films demonstrate. Emily Watson is too whiny and Stellan Skarsgaard hardly made an impression on me. And despite the Stellan's devastating accident, you know that things won't pick up. This movie was much worse than Dancer in the Dark. Do not rent it. You will be making a mistake. Go rent "The Celebration" instead.

In the tradition of great outdoor films like "Jeremiah Johnson" and "The Edge", this is an emotional film about human survival and love. Great performances by both actors, wonderful cinematography, and a really tight script make this improbably story believable. This can be a hard movie to find, but go to any good video store (not Blockbuster) and they should have it. It seems like nobody knows about this movie, but it is really one to catch on a Saturday afternoon.

This is a good movie with solid dialogue and solid performances. My problem is that the story is slow moving and nothing that exciting happens. With all the hoopla around this film I thought it would be mind blowing like "The Godfather" but in my humble opinion it doesn't come close.

Mummy Returns had a few good things going for it, but none of them have to do with plot or entertainment value. The effects were okay for the most part, although the Scorpion King monster at the end was awful. The second unit photography and many of the Egyptian vistas were beautiful, and the sets were pretty good ripoffs of those in the Indiana Jones movies.

Out of all the actors, clearly Brendan Fraser was the worst. He was boring, he had nothing to do, and he wasn't funny at all. Oded Fehr was the best actor in the movie, along with the Rock. Unfortunately the Rock is only in the first five minutes of the movie, and he has almost no lines of dialogue. His CGI appearance at the end, of course, was forgettable.

This movie could have been much better -- right now it has a lot of boring, unoriginal moments.

This may not be the worst movie ever made, but it is clearly one of the worst big budget movies ever. Everyone involved should be embarrassed. Bad acting, horrendous script by Akiva Goldsman of "Lost in Space" fame. This one is right up there with Speed 2 and Spawn, all from the same year of 1997.

This satire has some really funny moments in the first half, when the whole idea of the "Mantan" show is first developed. The ending is too dark, however, and the dark tone does not seem to fit with the film. I'm not really sure of the point of the movie, or what Spike Lee is trying to say. This vagueness is partly due to the unclear perspective of the characters themselves. Great concept and plenty of controversial humor, but this falls short of being a great film.