Reviews

I saw the trailer for this movie over a year ago and it didn't look that bad. So today I finally got to watch the movie and i have very mixed feelings on it.

First if you are expecting this movie to make sense technically/scientifically or have a friend that likes to point things out just stay clear of this as you will or your friend will have a field day picking out the flaws as their are many.

The scenes take way to long at times, maybe 50% of the movie is that way. From just people talking to one another to fighting. There are way to many slow motion captures and ridiculous camera shaking moments during fight scenes that lead you to believe the choreography was not very good at all to have to use that effect, plus it gives you a headache. The long pauses when people are talking especially at the end of the film before the last door was agonizingly boring and in no way suspenseful. You as the viewer end up wishing you were in control of the film as there are many instances were the main characters hesitate to do anything in strange situations.

Scenes / Characters:

I have already said that the scenes were way to long. Of coarse there are scenes specifically that really were not needed. Like the School scenes that seemed to go on forever. I understand it was used to let the viewer know how the train started and why they are their but even after the explanation you felt it was really hokey and stupid. A specific character i would like to point out on the bad guy side, gets his butt kicked at the start of the film and is pretty much a nobody. You get plenty of shots of him but he in no way seems a threat not even at the Guys with axes car, he gets beat easily, later midway threw the film he suddenly comes out of nowhere and is a huge force to be reckoned with, I think everyone that was watching this film with me at the same time cried out " what the hell is this crap " . I have never seen an under-developed character just start kicking everyone's ass out of nowhere. For example its like Bilbo Baggins randomly just kung fu fighting all the orcs by himself while the dwarfs just start watching like its no big deal. It was that stupid.

The train itself:

Only noted is that the train is self sustaining and the tracks all around the world are connected. Its supposedly beyond freezing outside and if you go out their you'll insta freeze. If thats the case how is the train still going? How is it that the rails haven't bent or snapped. Why hasn't the trains bent or become warped.

Basically, you'll figure most of the movie out before it happens, the characters are okay but never feel really important. The story is not developed in a way you can follow most of the time. If you are to watch this movie just dumb down your intelligence a bit and go in with low expectations and it will be a lot more fun.

No wonder Jamie lee Curtis stated that this movie was the worst in her entire career. Its alright all in all but the focus of the movie is on a Russian science ship that is found by Donald Sutherlands crew. The Ship is alive and thinks the Crew is a virus. OK no problem right? seems not to bad. Until you start to watch it, the characters seem rather odd and somewhat hard to take seriously, Donald Sutherland sounds strange at times as if hes trying to do an accent every so often but never pans out what kind of accent he was trying to achieve. Every character is very bland and you find it hard to focus on the happenings around them, cliché lines and cheesy robotic bad guys. Humans turned into robots just seem strange rather than scary, they are supposed to be threatening i guess to the crew but they always manage to get their butts kicked quickly, so much for the robot humans.

Sometimes there is moments that don't make sense. At the start of the film when first finding the science ship they make note there is no weapons on board. But throughout the movie we find machine guns, a Missile room?, and various other weapons throughout the ship.

The movie is a B rated movie at best but to be fair to B rated movies this is actually not even that good. Id pass up this movie if I were you but its your choice if you really like bad flicks.

At the start this was a great story somewhat, The story of a village where people are completely missing,..on the other hand randomly in the series the writers decide that Gwen is confused about her sex life and her dedication to her boyfriend is put into question. There is really no call for that or build up to show for it as to why she would question her need for sex. That was the first screw up. We are taken to a small village where people are missing taking a bit to find a young guy that shoots gwen with a shotgun fearing that evil will come back. That was pretty interesting as the acting was good. Two others Ianto and Tosh are taken prisoner by they don't know what. Ill stop and say the build-up of characters in this series you have to take with a grain of salt as they are just put in at random for each cast member. Like in this as Tosh now is someone who likes to get out of danger? skipping ahead this was a great story as you find the villagers are eating people, and gets quite scary. Where does it get worse? When Tosh is running away from the meat hungry guy in the woods, isn't she supposed to be good at escaping? great writing... She trips over herself, looks back way to many times and yup falls on the floor for over 15 seconds face down unable to move, i thought she was caught in a bear trap but nope just laying for no reason not even trying to get up on the floor. so the guy catches up to her...yeah...

The Worst part. The tosh on ground, guy choking her, owen shows up with gun to meat guys head. the guy lets go of tosh and a random cop they found earlier now points a gun at owen , sooo gwen points a gun at the cop. Even though gwen should know she has the upper hand here, the baddies tell her to drop her gun aaaaanndd she does. what a cop instinct eh. so now they are all taken except for jack who stayed behind to question a random thing he shot, turns out to be a villager gone hungry. So everyone's in a room, all the villagers will eat them, nope jack smashes threw with a tractor rig jumps out and shoots all the villagers with a shotgun, not one of the 8 villagers with guns shoots him at all, wow he does all this with a shotgun?? not even a two second delay to cock it, nope. Apparently Jack is the king of fixing issues and the rest of the team is only needed to get caught in issues as meat bags so he can figure out the crime/phenomenon of every episode. wow. Not to mention none of them died he just makes them unable to move. what an expert..... Now he wants to kill the main meat guy but Gwen says stop and the others say stop, WHY? there's no reason to, at this point its life or death if they get up again but sure well risk it. gwen wants to question the guy..... why again... .just getting 10 times more bad before that last seconds of the show stop. So the guy tells her it made him happy to eat people. shes horrified oh no. Later shes talking about how she could have a baby with her boyfriend and get promoted before torchwood. Scene blacks out to Gwen and owen together, owen with his shirt off she starts making out with owen. what ....the ....hell...were the writers thinking. All this within one episode does a women with a good man at home throw everything away for a guy at work that just wants to get laid, so basically heres the Episode. 1. Villagers that eat people. good 2. Shotgun scene with gwen good. 3. Gwen questioning sexuality. Bad. 4. Tosh liking escaping dangerous areas then failing horribly. Bad. 5. Gwen giving up gun when she has advantage. Bad. 6. Jack as superhero with gun. Over the top Bad. 7. Gwen wanting to question meat guy. Bad. 8. Gwen becoming a complete slag for no reason. Bad.

Great plot. bad way to fit the actors into the story. Almost made me never want to watch another episode.

Never have I saw a show that was so good, and an episode so interesting go to total crap.

I must say this film is very well done. It shows a deep respect for the book it followed "From Emporer to Citizen" written by Pu Yi himself. Everything from the Elegant screen captures to the Actor's that portrayed Pu Yi. I believe no one could have directed or accomplished anything better on screen about the Forbidden city and Pu Yi's life better than Bernardo Bertolucci. The movie kept me well informed and emotionally concerned for the Emporer's life and what would happen to him. His life was a sad one i believe but not forgotten (in my opinion). Most of the Movie was completely flawless, i do think though that the sexual imagery could have been dimmed down a bit, obviously in scenes where Pu Yi did not witness such acts, so how could he write about it. The movie could also have moved more faster, Believe me when i say i loved this movie but it took me 2 days to watch because it took my attention away at times, especially when you know whats going on, ... you do not need 5 minutes of watching someone in bed or slowly roaming down the length of entire loooooong table. Those moments should have been avoided. But none the less this film brings out much history of that era and remains to be a beloved story as well as a witness to sympathetic tragedy.

Very rarely do you get to see the whole life of someone and their struggles - from child to death. So much information, so much Beauty and so much Old culture, this still is not a movie to ever be missed, definitely see it as it is sure to captivate your imagination.

I like old movies, so much and the Beginning of this movie pulled me right into it. I watched with wide eyes, the beautiful colors, and great actors, and nice beginning to a story i believed to be a nice romance. It then hits me, why are the Chinese speaking so well in their ability to use English? lol. The movie tended to show the Chinese to be mindless kids doing there daily chores but not knowing anything more than what they are told to do. I find this disturbing because they are a very well cultured and smart people. The story has a lot of instances where you think the main character a priest Father O'Banion played by William Holden is having feelings towards Siu Lan played by France Nuyen and maybe just maybe they would get together by the end of the film. But what ends up happening is a pushing away game the whole movie, Father O'Banion shows some feelings then all of a sudden tries to get the girl away from him, kind of destroys the mood so many times.

In the Midst of all the pushing away, a military man Ho San played by Weaver Lee, keeps making trouble for the Priest and the head priest and giving them receipts for things he takes from the priests such as wine, horses, food etc. Eventually he ends up raping Siu Lan and by the end of the movie they have a child? And eventually Siu Lan is OK with this....? as soon as that occurred i was turned off from the film i think it destroyed it really.. it was a great beginning the stretched out for too long , to leave you with a sense of wrong at the end.

I must say that the Actors were Spectacular in this film, France Nuyen was perfect for the role of Siu Lan and had the perfect charm to keep you watching. William Holden was a perfect example of a priest with past regrets and his trials at temptation. All in all this was a fun to watch movie, but with a flawed ending. I give it a 7 because No matter what the ending was, the beginning to me was a great start and the ending may be flawed but the movie was made more for propaganda than anything else around that time.

If you would like to see a movie about china, i would highly recommend " The Last Emporer ".

The first time i saw this film is the same feeling as i had on the second time i watched it. Garbage that you can't turn away from. As you sit to watch the film, you get a sense of nervousness coming over the passengers in the train. You watch as 2 teens terrorize each passenger one by one. This didn't make sense to me, The 2 terrorizers go to each person causing different issues, and the passengers all watch and do nothing, they all feel the same way about the 2 thugs causing problems and speak out eventually, what gets me is that you'd think by the 3rd person saying for them to stop what they are doing, the other 2 would have spoke up as well and ganged up on the terrorizers. But no? they sit there and pretend nothings happening... I'm sorry but its not human nature to sit there and let things go on like they were. Especially when you know the next person probubly is going to be you. On the flip side of things, i can't stop watching this movie no matter how frustrated i get with the passengers on the train. It really pulls you in and grabs your every attention hoping that someone will put the 2 thugs in their place. And i am so happy to say they eventually do. Even at the end again things seem not to make sense, the police show up and take the 2 terrorists that just got beat up out of the train, but no police officer questions anyone they just leave? Then the passengers all leave one by one saying nothing..? This movie is really a movie that would not happen in real life, there are problems like that that may happen, but the way the passengers and police were acting is definitely not. Maybe on an Elementary school bus but i cannot imagine adults letting such tragedy happen. So it's safe to say its a good movie to make your emotions get the best of you in anger for whats going on, because you feel you would never act that way with 2 psycho youths doing whatever they want. If you like to challenge your emotions , its a good movie to watch.