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Reviews
The Cave (2005)
Barely watchable
To begin, I'll have to compare it to The Descent, which was actually very good. If you have the chance, see that instead.
The recipe book for making an exciting film obviously includes: almost constant, annoying background music, adding rapid-fire drumming to the music for any action sequences, shaking the camera during any action sequence, masking holes in the action with total darkness, the standard face and mouth of any Hollywood monster since 1990, making the whole place collapse in an explosion at the end, always preferring looks over character development and always remembering that the target audience is too stupid to figure things out unless you repeat them ten times.
Utter, shameless drivel unworthy of a fuller review.
Shi mian mai fu (2004)
Not all I'd hoped
The trailers made it look better than it was. Very pretty (not quite as pretty as Hero) photography. OK story, though it seemed a little bit childish. Let down by random plot holes and the ending, which made me actually laugh. Plot holes like what? Well, let's take two people and no real Spoiler: let them walk for miles through ever-changing beautiful scenery until they have an Important Conversation. Then they get on their horses and ride off. I presume they keep special miniature horses in their pockets, and add water to them so they can grow to normal horse size. Or something. And people contradicted themselves a bit, even allowing for the double-double-crossing that the plot revolves around. Fun. Overlong.
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004)
I saw it twice in one week, and liked it both times
This appears to have divided people into love it/hate it camps. It's a fairly mundane story - kind of like a boys-own adventure, but it sure is lovely to look at. Paltrow as the female lead... was perfect. Ignore all the comments to the contrary, I can't imagine anyone else playing it much better.
The closest I could come to a complaint is that the film's too dark in most of the scenes. They used a lot of haze effects (more so in the first 20 minutes or so) to give it an old-film feel which goes a long way towards giving this movie its incredible style. I initially thought I was going to hate it but soon got into the swing of things. However, I imagine myself playing this one on DVD in front of my friends and constantly apologising for the quality when it's on a TV-size screen - to be honest it reminded me of nothing more than a dodgy cam pirate copy!
A lot of people have complained that it's just a sub-standard Indiana Jones... think again. If this film had contained all the humour and frankly silly action sequences that make IJ what it is, it would have failed on every other level, I'm sure of it. It's just right. There are funny moments but they're buried in the murkiness.
I didn't leave the cinema on a high, I didn't feel the need to rave about it to my friends... but I loved every minute of it.
Open Water (2003)
Awful, unfrightening and flat.
It would have been funnier if the man's name was Bob. Because that's all he did. Bob up and down for an hour. Wicked. This film was dreadful. Shot like a home movie (especially during the first section, the build-up of characters before they get stuck in the water) with poor angles, fuzziness, off-colours and shaky pictures, it tried to seem more like a fly-on-the-wall documentary. Trouble is, I couldn't bring myself to give a damn about the couple. They weren't interesting, and this film was certainly no Jaws in terms of suspense, either. Everything that happens is pretty much shown in the trailer. The musical score is slightly bizarre too, playing low whale-like chants whenever a boat was about to come in sight.
Grosse Pointe Blank (1997)
One of my all-time favourite films
Lots of praise for this movie already. I can only re-iterate some points: The soundtrack is outstanding. (Some unusual) 80s tracks that fit *perfectly*. If I had to pick my all time favourite musical moments in cinema, this film would have at least two of them (99 Red Balloons and Under Pressure).
There's a fantastic fight scene before one of these special musical moments. It's fantastic because it's almost silent - no background noises, no fake punching sounds, just two people trying to kill each other. This is unbelievably refreshing given that most Hollywood nonsense sounds like a parody of fighting.
The characters aren't all that well-developed, but you get a lot out of them with the little information that is on show.
After having seen this little gem many times, I'd say there's not much I could pick holes in, apart from the humour in the climactic fight scenes is a bit forced, maybe. And that's stretching to find flaws. Oh, and I don't think DOOM was ever released as an arcade game :)
It's brilliant. Funny, touching without being soppy, good for anyone to watch. I disagree with the comments before saying that it's not for everyone. If you find this film offensive, you've got a problem. It's glorious.
Gothika (2003)
Unexpectedly predictable
Why was this film called "Gothika"? That was never explained, except maybe it sounded cooler and was more likely to attract younger viewers.
Halle Berry is quite good. Certainly she has a nice bottom. Some of the other actors are quite below average.
If you've seen any "ghost" story since THE SIXTH SENSE, you aren't going to be much surprised by this one. It bears more than a small similarity to STIR OF ECHOES in its atmosphere.
Visually moderately appealing, the movie's plot took a turn for the worse about 2/3 of the way through and the final few scenes let it drop off into yawn-inducing territory, I'm afraid.
King Arthur (2004)
Arthur's not in right now, please leave a message.
They might as well have set it in 2035 for all the historical accuracy. The idea that this is a more realistic retelling of what most people see as a nice bedtime story is laughable. It's not that people of that time wouldn't have been grittier and less romantically magical than depicted in , say, THE SWORD IN THE STONE, but it's just how anybody who's ever seen a map of Britain would have thought, "hang on a minute!" There's a round table. That's nice. It's in a keep outside Hadrian's wall. That's remarkable. Everyone speaks the same language. The peasants are eloquent and articulate and adept at making profound speeches. Accents? Well... they're kind of random. Two people who grew up in the same village have completely different accents and two who come from different planets have the same one. The costumes are nice to look at and completely stupid. There are lots of people running around painted blue, because BRAVEHEART made money and people want to cash in on it. Who cares that there hadn't been people doing that for... oh, I don't know, as long as Australia has existed as a colony, say, for comparison. Mmm. Everywhere is either weeks away on horseback or just around the corner, depending what the "plot" needed at the time. And the director really wanted to have been in on GLADIATOR. He really, really, wanted this to be as close as possible. Money, I guess. I saw this movie at a surprise preview a few weeks ago and was very disappointed. It's crap. It would have been better if there were more spaceships in it.
I, Robot (2004)
Better than people imply
I saw this film a week ago, quite liked it and then read the reviews on here. After seeing so many negative reviews, I went back today and saw it again, for my own curiosity, bearing in mind the things people had mentioned.
Forget the Asimov source for a minute and imagine it as a story in its own right. It's quite good, really. Will Smith is Will Smith as usual, but that fits in neatly with the film and isn't a problem. We know he can act when he needs to, but he doesn't really do much of it here.
Seeing the film and criticising it for not being like the I, Robot you read as a child is missing the point. And as other people have said, there's an awful lot of little Asimovisms in this movie.
Obvious similarities are drawn to films like MINORITY REPORT (the cars, the casual technology) and INDEPENDENCE DAY (um, it's got Will Smith in it) but they're irrelevant. And to any recent "feel-good" film about racial equality. Which is what most of the story's about really. I've noticed other comments mentioning that you don't notice that for most of the time, the cast on screen is black or a robot... well, you don't, but isn't that the way it should be? People playing people...
There are no real surprises, everything plods away, but it's a satisfactory film. It's not too marred by Hollywood's normal "You've got mail!" ideas of what technology will look like in a few years time. The robots, for the most part, put the CG effects in other current films to shame. Completely. They're really very good. You can forget you're watching a special effect.
The demolition scene was silly, and the car chase scene was a bit of a waste of time, and featured the only couple of moments where I would criticise the special effects. Took me out of the film for a moment.
Fatal Error (1999)
Laughably bad TV movie
I've come to enjoy some of these dreadful TV sci-fi movies. I'm not quite sure why, but stuff like this is entertaining. The plot is flimsy to say the least and includes several huge leaps of faith. Think DEEP SHOCK or FROZEN IMPACT.
The plot revolves around a mis-matched couple, the Mulder and Scully of this story, who're on the trail of a computer virus that can kill people as they watch the screen. This is off-the-box stuff, but there's no spoilers here because it doesn't actually do anything else.
Oh, and watch out for the laughably bad "server room", a room full of outdated junk in racks, with no other furniture than a water cooler. Yeah, right. Glorious!