Change Your Image
duane-93
Reviews
Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008)
Lucas has fulfilled his destiny....as a Saturday Morning cartoon hack....
and the cycle is now complete.....
Why is everybody so surprised? Lucas was displaying his true colors by the time he returned to make episodes I thru III, which were nothing short of Saturday Morning cartoons but live-action.
I mean, come on!
General Grievous?! That was Skeletor!
We already saw most the action presented in Episode III in bad Saturday morning cartoons put out in the 80's like He-Man and the Masters of the Universe!
Lucas showed promise with Episode IV in 1977, then a different director saved Episode V, then Lucas returned to direct VI and introduced us to Ewoks, which were a sign of things to come...
then a nearly 20-year hiatus gave him plenty of time to study the fine art of bad Saturday morning cartoons and commercial kiddie-pandering....
The Dark Knight (2008)
Extremely Overrated and Over-hyped
I'm shocked that so many people are rating this 9 or 10 out of 10 stars.
I'm amazed that so many people are calling this the best movie of 2008 and the best super hero movie of all time.
This was an "OK" movie. Not a great movie, not even a great super hero movie.
As far as the plot is concerned, it was mediocre, a bit scrambled, and didn't really offer anything new. And did I mention it was too long? As a rule, I love long, epic movies, but this just exhausted me. I walked out of the theater thinking it was too long. It just went on and on. And not in an adventurous way, which probably would have made me appreciate the longevity. No, it just dragged on...just when you thought they were wrapping things up, you realized that a whole other part nine was just getting starting to get greased up. If someone who loves long epic movies is sitting there thinking "oh my god, it's not over *yet*?!", there's a problem.
As far as Heath the Joker is concerned:
No.
I mean "no", as in No, it was not a Oscar performance. Cool, yes. Different, yes. Understated in a good way, yes. But Oscar-spellbinding? No. I wouldn't even have minded seeing more of the Joker, because just like the the first Tim Burton Batman, the directors of both managed to make the main character, Batman, about as interesting as wet paper bag (sure, the actors didn't help much), so more wacky Jack Nicholson or surreal and twisted Heath Ledger would have been very welcome.
Which brings me to Batman himself...I couldn't understand half of his dialogue because of this over-played bassist growl that Christian Bale emoted in all of his Batman lines. What the hell was that? Could anybody understand a word he was saying? I thought it was me, but I would turn to my girlfriend and ask "what did he say?", and she would shrug, and I noticed others doing the same.
Far and away from being the best super hero on screen, light-years away from X-Men, Spiderman, and dare I say it...even the first Ang Lee Hulk, which I still think gets a bum rap.
Should have been titled Batman Unmemorable (because I really can't remember much about it all or what happened.) 6 of 10.
Speed Racer (2008)
Where are all these good reviews coming from, who are these people who like this?
Point 1: Coming home from 1st grade in 1973 and watching Speed Racer, Ultraman and Johnny Socko and his Flying Robot is one my most cherished childhood memories. The whole imagery, the music and the style lodged dreamlike feelings, mysterious aura and even a slightly haunting (I don't mean scary) impact into me as a child. For kids my age at that time, this was the first (and only for the time) intro to those big, overdrawn eyes from Japan, and there was just something...weirdly enticing about it. (I'll admit that Trixie was my first childhood crush...probably explains why I'm so screwed up today).
Point 2: When released on DVD several years ago, I started to watch them again, 30 years later, and I'll admit, I was like....ummmmm...maybe I should have just left it alone. Just killed another cherished childhood memory, dude. BUT, watching them, even though I had to admit as an adult that the stories, dialog and animation sucked, watching them 30 years later STILL invoked those dreamlike sensations and mysterious aura, and I was glad for that.
I cannot fathom how ANYONE, who either saw Speed Racer at age six in 1973 or never saw it, or saw at age 6 in 2003 even in the context of modernized entertainment, can like this movie. Like the original Speed Racer, it lacks decent dialog, a decent story, and believable action. But it commits the cardinal sin of making its action completely incomprehensible. Yes, the original Speed had preposterous physics, with cars going straight up mountains, sideways along cliffs, and bad animation with nothing more rotating backdrops behind a static Mach 5 with spinning wheels. But even a 6-year-old like me knew what was going on! You know that a filmmaker is either lazy or don't know what they're doing when each shot averages about .3 nanoseconds in length. Did someone get crazy with the editing scissors or they just didn't know how to construct good, coherent action. I never once felt involved in the action sequences, much less could follow them.
Some have complained that this movie is too bright, uses too many colors, and should have an epileptic seizure warning, but that was the least of my beefs. Yes, I did jokingly say after it was over, "Too many colors...I need aspirin", but it wouldn't have been so bad if I could follow what the hell was actually going on.
The BIGGEST SIN of this movie?????.....They KILLED the Theme Music!!!! Where was it???? That was the best part of the original Speed Racer Cartoon!!!! ARGGGGG!!!!!! And I don't want to hear some excuse like it is "dated", kids today would like, etc. etc.....My daughters (6 and 11) watch the old Speed Racer cartoons with me and they love that song!!!!!