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ratmankey
Reviews
Chôjin densetsu Urotsukidôji (1989)
Horribly confusing and boring
Please note: I'm referring to the NC-17 feature that was released here, not the three-part OVA. This is important because...
The version I saw made no sense whatsoever. I spent the first half hour or so understanding what I was watching but then...well, then I just lost it. Characters we've never seen before start popping up and doing stuff, and we're apparently supposed to care. Sub-plots appear out of nowhere and are just as suddenly abandoned. I still have no idea what happened...not just in the ending, but in the entire movie. This movie gave me a headache, and I even understood Akira the first time I watched it! It's horribly incoherent, so it basically boils down to unbelievably twisted rape scenes and ultra-violence with no plot to anchor it all. In other words, one of the longest (I refuse to believe it was actually only 108 minutes) most boring movies I have ever seen.
There's no real point in touching on the sex in the movie, since every other reviewer will mention it. I will say that Freud would have an absolute field day with this. After a while I found my thoughts on WHY the animators thought this stuff up more interesting than my attempts at following the plot. There are some scenes with ingenious ideas and imagery, but again...no plot, no point. I should have turned it off, but it became a challenge...I promised myself I'd make it to the end, and when I finally did after what seemed like an eternity, I regretted that decision.
I commented to one of my friends in the midst of the film that it felt like a ridiculously long series that had been cut apart and pieced together into a movie. Turns out I was partly right: it's actually a three-part OVA. So THAT explains why there are 3 climaxes (no pun intended). Since I believe in giving a movie a fair chance, one day I'll watch the original series - subtitled, since the US voiceovers are ATROCIOUS (but amusing) - and make a decision then. Just give me a year or so to forget how painful this version was.
Nuovo Cinema Paradiso (1988)
Wildly uneven (spoilers)
I swear, the people who call this film one of the greatest of all time must not have watched the second half. The first half - when Toto is a boy - is pure magic, and one of the best love letters to the movies that has ever been written. Every shot, every scene, rings true. But then Toto grows up, and the film loses its focus. The magic continues in scenes of Toto and Alfredo talking, but too much time - far too much time - is given to the love affair with Elena. This would be okay if it actually led somewhere. But it doesn't...Elena leaves, and that's the last we ever hear of her. (note: this is the cut version from 1988 I'm talking about, not the director's cut. I understand that Elena's story is brought to an actual conclusion in the director's cut) And the scenes we do have with Elena are nothing new...we've seen this kind of "first love" story in countless movies before, and many of them did it better. (Whisper of the Heart comes to mind) Honestly, we even get the old "happy couple running through a field" shot. Throughout this sequence of adolescent Toto, there are countless little vignettes. But instead of helping to paint a picture of the town and how the movies effect them (as the excursions in the first part did), they're just sort of...there. It's like the director decided to throw stuff at the screen and hope it sticks.
Then suddenly Toto leaves and we're brought to the present. But what I don't get is why we're supposed to think that his leaving was a good thing. Yes, the adult Toto is successful, but he's also unable to maintain a meaningful relationship, and seems to be extremely lonely and unhappy (not to mention virtually mute). We finally get the magic of the beginning back in the finale with the reel of kisses.
Cinema Paradiso is as heartfelt a tribute to the movies as has ever been made, but as a human drama it falls flat in the second half. I was more heartbroken when the theater was demolished than I was when Elena leaves Toto. With the exception of Alfredo, the Cinema Paradiso itself is the only truly memorable character of the film. I'm still anticipating the "new" version however, since it seems to address many of my complaints.
Ich und er (1988)
Terrible
As soon as my friends and I stumbled upon this movie in a Leonard Maltin guide, it became a bit of a running joke among us. Finally, after years of wondering just what this movie was, we found it in the local video store and had to see it for ourselves.
Man, what a disappointment. We expected it to be bad, don't get me wrong. But we expected it to be REALLY bad. Instead, this was just bad bad: mediocre. There's nothing the least bit interesting about this movie. If you're going to make a bad movie, at least make it REALLY bad. Classically bad. Anyway, we only got about halfway through before giving up on it completely. The whole thing was just really annoying...the penis has an obnoxious voice and keeps calling "Hey Bert! Look at her, Bert!", usually in reference to a woman who isn't even all that attractive...and then Bert gets into some kind of trouble as a result. Rinse, lather, repeat. Over and over again. What a waste.
Avoid.
Austin Powers in Goldmember (2002)
Yeah, Baby, Ye- Oh, just give me my money already.
In short: God, what a disappointment! Okay, okay, so I'm being a little unfair. First off, I gotta say: do NOT look at the cast list. A lot of the really good jokes in the movie come from unexpected cameos, and knowing about them beforehand will destroy a lot of the humor. The opening has a whole bevy of these surprises, and is easily one of the cleverest scenes in the film. Unfortunately, the freshness and originality wears off quickly. As each of the characters are reintroduced, it just gets more and more uncomfortable. It becomes increasingly clear that no one involved really cares. Mike Myers seems to be strolling on screen, re-enacting each of his catchphrases, and collecting his check. The LEAST they could have done was think of some new jokes, but instead they re-use all the old ones. The shadow gag, the radar bit..it's all here, and we've seen it all before.
Another thing: CUT DOWN ON THE BLOODY MUSICAL INTERLUDES! Good god almighty, these things are painful...like much of the movie. Okay, so the "Hard Knock Life" bit is possibly the funniest scene in the film, but that's it. The rest really have got to go. But the biggest strike against the film? It takes the second movie's biggest problem - a reliance on gross-out humor - and multiplies it ten-fold. Fat Bastard's back, but while he was at least intermittently funny last time, here he's just disgusting. And not in a good way...in an excruciating, "Why the hell am I watching this?" kind of way. The titular Goldmember has a fetish for dead skin that's more disturbing than funny. And while sh*t was the bodily function du jour last time, here the filmmakers seem fascinated by farts and urine. Ah, how far we've come in 3 years.
I know I must sound like this is a bad movie, but it's really not. Just don't expect anything nearly as good as the first movie, or even the second. There ARE some hilarious scenes, like the aforementioned rap parody, an inspired scene between Austin and his father that plays on British slang, and a play on misread subtitles. But it's the long, laughless stretches that stick in the mind more. But if the humor's not surprising, at least the plot is. By film's end, we have the roles of Dr. Evil, Scott, and Mini-Me completely thrown for a loop in ways that even surprised me (and I can usually predict plot twists a mile away). It makes me curious about how they'd deal with a fourth movie...but considering how quickly the humor well is drying up for Austin, I'm not sure if I could sit through another one to find out.
One last thing I forgot to mention: How the HECK are they going to release this movie in the Netherlands? I mean good god, you'd think the movie wanted every last Dutchman on the planet wiped out. I also forgot to mention another high point: Beyonce Knowles should have a great career in the movies. She studied up on her Pam Grier before auditioning, and man does it show...she's straight out of the blaxploitation era. I completely forgot she was anything but an actress, which is quite an achievement. Oh, and her song on the soundtrack, "Work It Out", kicks major old-school booty.
Again, it's worth seeing, at least as a matinee. Just don't expect greatness.
Monster a Go-Go (1965)
Just to clarify...
PLEASE stop referring to Bill Rebanes as the director of this celluloid atrocity. Bill Rebanes directed the original, incomplete movie, and then Herschel Gordon-Lewis finished it off. Most of the blame belongs to Lewis. He's the one who edited the pieces together in random order, which is the movie's biggest problem.
Anyway, people don't seem to understand what a truly bad movie is. Manos, Plan 9, The Creeping Terror, Eegah. Yes they're bad. But they're GOOD bad...you can watch them and laugh. This film belongs with Armageddon and others in the "painful bad" category. There is NO redeeming value here, aside from the hilarious phone scene. It's pure dreck...a shame, considering how much fun Lewis's other films are. (see Something Weird for a good laugh)
In short: the worst editing in cinema history outside of Ninja in the U.S.A., but nowhere near as funny. Worth seeing only so you can say you've seen it.