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The Rundown (2003)
Standin' on top of the rock....
It's been a long time coming....A change, a rift in the whole action genre...With the last of our action heroes Arnold Schwarzenegger making his move to politics we the old school 80's actioner fans need a new face...The Rock answers the call with all of the determination that he can muster to conquer this genre...In my opinion he's off to a hell of a start....Yet Arnold himself shows up wishing him luck...Years back the Rock became the people's champion...A few years later he shows us some action in the Mummy Returns....Years later he expands upon the role in the Scorpion King....and now in 2003:
THE RUNDOWN-The rock is Beck a Bounty Hunter good at his job but not happy with it or his boss....Sean William Scott is his Rundown.... Beck's chase leads them both into the amazon....Then the story shifts into Indiana Jones territory...
THE ROCK-The rock explodes onto the screen with nonstop action, a wry wit....an intense presence with charisma to burn...Oh, the best part is he can act up storm where the other professional wrestlers that I've seen have failed....
SEAN WILLIAM SCOTT-What can I say? The guy is funny and is good at his job....But he's in danger of being type cast as an actor...He could take the lead in a film and be quite comfortable....
CHRISTOPHER "What do I look like? a Psychic?" WALKEN-Amazing actor...He chews up the scenes he's in with gleeful relish....
"ROSE"(Don't know the full name, sorry) DAWSON-Probibly the most beautiful actress I've seen in a long time...as the leader of the rebellion she can't do wrong....
If your in for 95 minutes of 80's style action with a contemporary twist give in to the chase....go and see THE RUNDOWN....
MY RATING------------10
Versus (2000)
Two immortals, one reincarnated samurai swordsman, and of course some zombies for good measure...
....and what do we have? Highlander on acid...Wow what a kenetic actioner....For two hours I was excited and laughing my fool head off as this film has one hell of a sense of humor....However the plot is such that you often have to take your own thing from the film...
"SPOILERS" possibly...The film starts in the past at sometime near the end of the time of the samurai....as a swordsman squares off against an immortal who can control the dead....All victims of the Yakuza they rise up from the earth....A samurai witnesses the slaughter of the swordsman and then he himself challenges the immortal....Flash forward to the present...as the epic battle of good vs. evil comes full circle.....
I am a Highlander fan and that's what took from this film speculation on how the immortals could be "Born"....666 temporal portals all over the world...The forest of Ressurection was only one....Take note Highlander fans this isn't even part of the series we all love but makers of versus none the less show us how cool Highlander could be with a cool hero, and a great story with sense of imagination not dollor signs.....
PROS-
NONSTOP ACTION.....SOME GREAT IMMORTAL COMBAT....SWORDFIGHTS...ZOMBIES WITH GUNS AND THE ABILITY TO USE THEM.....BREAKNECK PACING...A SENSE
OF HUMOR....
CONS-
NONE COMES TO MIND
A truely great movie and I think that the film makers should be commended as great films are hard to find nowadays.....
Bride of Chucky (1998)
Even as a stand alone film I'm still conflicted....
This film has a lot of things going for it....It had Don Mancini who's been the same writer through the entire series which is a big plus in my opinion...If you're doing any kind of series then I believe that the same people should be involved all the way through it...Brad Dourif still seems to get a kick out of portraying Chucky and rightfully so as he's a great insanely funny character....
The movie itself was fast, energetic and fun....as a stand alone film that is....and that's where I stand conflicted...I really wanted this to play as a part of the Child's Play series but sadly too many things in this film's plot don't allow that....
Sure It starts off with Chucky shredded by that fan in 3 and stuffed into an evidence locker...wrapped neatly in brown paper bag...Once this scene has played out the series continiuty begins breaking down....With the addition of two major plot points...
VooDoo for Dummys: A real funny gag...Just played out completely wrong...I can buy Jennifer Tilly's character would using this book but for chucky to know the exact page number that she'd need that just doesn't make sense as he studied under an actual voodoo preist ala the first movie....
The Amulet Heart of Damballa: Interesting plot point but we should've known about when Brad Dourif was shot in the first movie...When his body fell to the ground and in the police photo we see from his file... When see that same photo from the police file in the first film here but it's been badly altered to include the amulet around his neck...
Was it the writers fault or was the director's fualt who knows? Either way it ruins the series continuity for me...But this by no means is a bad film....It's actually quite fun....
Freddy vs. Jason (2003)
In the film the was once promised to be epic....
Freddy's just a little cheesed off...I guess 10 to 15 years in developemental hell will do that to you....Seems that ole' Fred needs some help being real so he enlists a little aid from fellow slasher JASON VORHEES....It seems a simple enough premise and it does work on a fun, popcorn nonsensical Charlie's angels kind of way...Ronny Yu's direction is tight though The prospect of him taking on two of the most beloved characters in horrors long history scared me....
Yet oddly enough both characters are perfectly balanced...within their own worlds...
FREDDY still retains some of what I liked most about him...His sadistic sense of humor, his immortal ego....Witty, and dark he once again has some scary moments with the aid of a few musical zingers....We get some more backstory through voiceovers and breif flashbacks of the earlier films....
JASON was never scary, he was merely unstoppable, immortal and inescapable....He's still strong, undead and brutal...Yet his character suffers a bit of a miss-step...He's sluggish almost most sedated in certain scenes....He now stalks his prey by loudly stomping his feet like Frankenstein's monster...His back story was handled by talking about his legend....and by a dream/flashback....
Sure this film does have what made both of the film series good....
The Nightmare On Elm Street still has it's imaginative dreamscapes....Freddy taunting his victims....The Freddy song...
Friday the 13th still has it's graphic violence....absolutely stunning women....It's amazing how the friday the 13th films were always able to cast only the most beautiful of women.....oh, there's even some nudity for the hardcore fan.... ...and still it suffers within it's faults.... CONS:
Betsy Palmer didn't return as Pamela Vorhees and the films overall continuity suffers...
Ken's often sedated performance of Jason sucked...though it does improve as the film treks on...Just marginally though....
This film reaks of missed possibilities...filling all of the plot holes from both stories would been a dream come true for this fan...
I know Jason is strong but come on guys don't you think that his comic book style 3-mile punch was a bit excessive?
The ending also sucked and negated the entire 3rd act of the film....
But despite all of it's flaws I still enjoyed the ride it offered me...It was indeed a fast paced, fun mindless romp....
Resident Evil (2002)
One of the best Video game to movie translations...
After the whole George Romero fiasco I was torn...The early buzz on the film made it look as if the film wasn't very faithful to the game which was odd considering that Romero was let go because reportedly his script was not faithfull to the game...Why was this odd? Well Romero's script had characters from the first game including the monsters and if produced it would have been a filmed version of the first game with only a few liberties taken...The Paul Anderson script contained no characters from any of the games except for the monsters...hmm I finally broke down and went to see the film...
This one easily ranks up there with the best video game to film translations...Tomb Raider, Mortal Kombat...and now Resident Evil... This film contains everything from the games except for the main characters...Zombies, ghoulish mutating Licker, crows and zombie dogs yes most of the monsters have made into the film...The creepy camera angles from the game are also in the film...Playing like a prequel to the game series Anderson gives fans of the games and Romero's Living dead films a real treat...
SCARES:Quite a few...I pride myself on nothing ever getting to me in a horror film...This one did...I found that I was getting real jumpy...-10
VIOLENCE/GORE:Lots of gunplay, Martial arts, Bloody zombies(No actual feeding scenes-As Romero often shows in very graphic detail)...Laser grid violence...-10
SEX/NUDITY-Milla has a couple of very revealling scenes(WHY DO PARENTS TAKE THEIR YOUNG ONES, REALLY YOUNG ONES TO SEE AN R-RATED ZOMBIE FLICK,I mean even the games are an R-rated concept)-10 for the very beautiful Milla...
LANGUAGE-Some Profanity...-7
OVERALL-This so far is the best film I've seen this year...Non-stop action...great acting, scary atmosphere, great monsters...Creepy Camera angles...-10 Highly recommended...
Cremains (2001)
Well it has all of the ingredients of a good horror movie...Right?
I bought this DVD based on faith and my undying love of horror flicks. What I got was a no-budget mixed bag. The way that the film was shot adds a very lucid almost dream-like glaze over the scenes...This makes some of the darker scenes pretty creepy yet there are no real scary moments in the film...
"THE S&M KILLER"-Not much to this story...A whole lot of bad acting even for a B-movie...and a bound-up nude woman...3
"CONFESSIONS"-This is the root of the movie...The story from which others branch off from...This one concerns a man questioned by his own demons(That's my thoughts anyway)This story is my favorite it's a little better acted than the rest...7
"THE TOWN"-This creepy little short makes a statement about parental relationships and town sacrifices...4
"VAMPIRES"-One would think that this story would hold a special place in my heart seeing as I am a single young man...While I appreciate the vampire striptease the acting was just too horrible to stomach...2-(10-and major kudos go to the nude vampire for the best acting in the story)
"THE CREMAINDER" Ah, Here's where we pay off the confessions story...This final piece concerns a raised demon with a hat and long coat killing random people with a sword one of them being...?-1
MY FINAL SCORE:07
This movie has all the ingrediants of good horror movie right?
VIOLENCE/GORE-Very little
LANGUAGE-NONE
SEX/NUDITY-One nude vampire, one bound-up nude woman, one strung up woman with an open shirt(Wearing a bra)
CREEPY SETTINGS-One story "The Town"
You decide...but personally I don't hate it nor do I love it...
Jurassic Park III (2001)
Jurassic pork? Does anyone else smell bacon?
What happened to this series? It became way too commercial when it was turned a franchise...This movie tries to be a better film than it actually was in it inception...With mindblowing special FX, some trademark Speilberg close calls and a bevy of new dinos this film does it's best to scare the audience......But that's very hard when you don't care about any of the characters....I spent the entire expanse of the 90 minute running time wanting everyone except Sam Neil to emerge later on in the movie as dino droppings....This fast buck sequel had no real story to fit in it's 90 minute running time..Even Spielberg himself took a backseat to the production as an executive producer on the film...JP4 is on the way..I think the wise move would to rent it rather than see it in it's theatrical run...
LANGUAGE-3-Very little..
VIOLENCE/GORE-5-PG13 Violence and gore
SEX/NUDITY-0-None
SCARES-8-Some very well done close calls
Total movie score-2 stars
Hellgate: The House That Screamed 2 (2001)
The house that bled my wallet out of two bucks is more like it...
On a dark and dreary night I rented this flick along with another
"Horror Movie"-Hellgate it's unofficial brother....While Hellgate was a pointless movie with no thrills...a whole lot of bad comedy and a stunning female apparition... "House"It's big brother was a pointless movie with an interesting premise...The whole haunted house/gate to hell story intrigued me a lot...Here are the particulars:
SEX/NUDITY-Plenty of topless/shower scenes..No sex...
LANGUAGE-Some profanity...
VIOLENCE/GORE-Rubber monsters...digging out of a character's eyes ...Hellraiser like Chain rips...Talking corpses...A naked Female ghost with a smearing problem who's in desperate need of a towlette....
Still sounds like a good horror? It's a B-movie>>> Well actually it's standard is set way below a B-movie...Shot poorly on video...That whole Blair Witch way of filming is for me growing very tiresome...Poor rubbery FX...Poor performances for everybody concerned...Everyone except for Leslie Culton...She manages to do the unthinkable...She actually kept me awake during this movie....Her role was genuinely creepy and very easy on my eyes...It through this beakon of light I was able see my way out of the abyss and toward the right side of my mind...
Can I recomend this trip through madness to others? No-That is your choice and your choice alone....My final score 4-Story..10 for Leslie
Highlander (1986)
A true classic
In the ages long past we were introduced to the concept of immortal swordsmen battling each other throughout time..A unique and engaging story of action/romance..At the time I first saw Highlander I remember dreaming Of being immortal..What it would be like and all but now being immortal has become way too commercial...I for one am still a big Highlander fan...Yet I think the producers aren't as interested in their own creation as they once were or else they would have paid more attention to detail with Both the series and the movies...
HIGHLANDER-The rules are set...The story well written -Thus begins the epic battle between good and evil that has taken three sequels and three TV Series' to screw up all the continuity...
HIGHLANDER 2-Space talk-Alien immortals-Future setting-Then came the fan outcry and a new version..a Renegade Version
HIGHLANDER 3-Time traveling wizards-talking severed heads-Fighting on holy ground...Ignores the second film....
HIGHLANDER 4-Merging tv show with the films..Inconsistant dates...Connor Maclead film hero dies in the present also ignoring 2 & 3
HIGHLANDER/TV-Ignored all but the first film... HIGHLANDER/RAVEN/TV-The quickening happens when a mortal man kills an immortal...
HIGHLANDER/CARTOON-No head chopping-Quickenings can somehow be passed on and are self induced(Hinted at in H3)-Alien planet again-Prt. 2
This immortal series somehow manages to stay strong despite all of the continuity problems...The producers hear the fan outcry and tries to fix the problems with previous films only to create even more problems with each new sequel/new tv show/cartoon...If it aint broken don't fix it...All in all Highlander means well and is a good concept but the storyline's execution poor....