Reviews

I think this film shows the underbelly of what being a music fan can be. It is like all the stupid stuff you ever saw anyone do as a teen all wrapped up and put into one long moment. The production values are not great and I think the story contained therein is also not great. The film creates the idea that all fans of alternative rock and or heavy metal are complete idiots and a danger to be around. That is too bad because all rock fans are not that way. Maybe some people like it because it sort of romanticizes the idea of self destructing, but I think it just promotes self destructive activity as a healthy alternative to acting like a normal person. What more can I say, except I kind of wish they had never made this movie. It gets my pick for worst film made after 1990.

Interesting show but contains one or two things...in several episodes a race called the Xindi appear. The name sounds a lot like the Kzinti created by SF master Larry Niven...and at one point a future Star Trek Enterprise appears and its interior looks nothing like the later Federation ship interiors. I generally liked the show, particularly the character of T'Pol. I found the Captain to be a bit of a "goody two shoes" which is slightly out of sync with the Star Trek universe in general. In terms of the Star Trek world I have always had trouble with the warp speed designations, warp one is the speed of light, warp two is ten times the speed of light, warp three is 39 times the speed of light, etc. Warp 9.9999 is something like 200,000 times the speed of light...well, considering that light speed is 186,000 miles per second, 200,000 times light speed is somewhat...improbable, even to the most open minded SF fan. Star Trek created about 200 different alien races, many not very humanoid, so I think using an alien race name that appears in another SF universe is perhaps incorrect to do for them. A tad soapy at times, and I don't always agree with the stances Captain Archer takes, yet I think it is still good SF viewing.

Very well thought out thriller set against a backdrop of ordinary life in contemporary America. Will maybe catch people off guard not for the violence that appears here and thee in it, but for the concepts it embodies. We live in an age of secrets and hidden dangers probably more than anyone would like to admit, and that reality is exemplified by the story in this film. You have to wonder if Mr. Gibson's current problems had something to do with someone not liking what this movie says. What it does say is that you can never be certain that a given business is on the up and up, and danger can explode out of nowhere from seemingly innocent situations. All is fair game in the script and no-one is above suspicion as the plot unfolds revealing the seedy underbelly of one particular company in the corporate world. I will not give the plot away, other than to speculate that perhaps it said the wrong things to someone out there...hey, you never know, the world is becoming an increasingly strange place.

Well one thing I hate about vampires is they can be the most slovenly creatures around. I mean wipe yer chin for once cuz nobody likes a messy vampire. I suppose the steak in the heart was out of the question even though the ultraviolet light bit worked. Being in the arctic must freeze out peoples brains. I am festooned. Anyhow, looking forward to the sequel sometime in the near future-and hey what about that ending-kinda gets you right in the whatever. Guess we won't be seeing Josh Hartnett for a while. I missed part of the film because mine was a used one that stuck somewhere near the end and I had to skip over a few scenes to see the rest. Damn those cheap DVD places. I think the guy in the bulldozer could have been a bit more into things-he kind of stopped just when things were getting good. Best kill ratio of them all. Makes you realize the importance of being neat. Without all that blood on their chins the vampires might have passed for tourists and been ignored. Ha ha. Right. Time to go. My UFO is double parked. See ya.

The filmmakers really played on the fact that British people are often impossible to good effect within the parameters of this movie. Unfortunately the way in which British people are frequently impossible is not always something you can forgive, and that element makes this film good but not excellent. That someone could be every annoying thing and not be also considered a form of evil is maybe what this film is mocking, so maybe it is further ahead of the curve than I am giving it initial credit for. Good acting from the team of actors that also made the film Hot Fuzz, which is the better film to me. I found the annoying traits that are played upon in this movie to be a bit much at about the one hour point, but like I said maybe they are trying to make fun of just how irritating people can be, as they are in effect personifying evil by having so many traits that are supposedly there to ward away evil. That nothing is ever said about anything is pure England, and is like dealing with the just deceased in a way, and that the continuous counter reaction of everything is fine, when it most definitely is not, has the ultimate effect of destroying every scrap of possible good in a situation. Good zombie film, funny in places, with an interesting and intelligent sardonic sub text.

A surprisingly good drama. It shows a part of England that most people in North America don't think of as even existing. Good plot development and a good ending make this a worth while watch in a summer of dull and predictable blockbusters that don't seem to be impressing anybody, not even the kids they are aimed at. Refreshing to see an adult drama for a change, and the film does not shy away from hard subject matter, showing the stinking underbelly of drugs and violence lurking just below the surface in The New England, supposedly held in check by law enforcement, but in reality things are just as bad as the worst days of Chicago in the 1930s. The film castigates the Police in England for being not very effective, and illustrates the kind of trouble that exists for some in the streets of the UKs larger urban areas. Not a lame movie and not a shy movie.

It was predictable that they would make this movie, but it probably will not go down in horror film history as anything special because it is a fairly run of the mill horror film. It was watchable but not all that interesting to me. I think I have a good open mind for new film experiences but I think this saga is sort of pretentious. Like a copy of the Underworld saga but more easy on the eyes, it doesn't really add anything interesting to the genre of werewolf films or the genre of vampire films. Kind of a ho hum movie to me, oh well, there are other things to watch. One of the problems that I can see with this series is that they have to many young characters in an area that would not be so dominated by young people-as in the area of the occult. There would be visibly older people as much as there would be visibly younger people. Maybe it is like saying 'we were left out by you and now we are leaving you out' type of thing, in terms of the film being a reaction against so little acting work often being given to younger actors in general for serious parts. Maybe. It is sort of like a Peanuts cartoon where adults are portrayed as fuzzy indistinct nuisances.

Kind of interesting how it sort of borrows from the Pre Buddhist Bonpo shamanistic religion, but beyond that it it truly just a kids film. It might make an adult fantasy film fan think it is a safe bet but it really isn't in the Conan category, it is more like a gutsy Walt Disney movie. I found it watchable but I thought it might have been better if the lead character hadn't been ten years old. I like kids, so I watched it anyway. Not terrible, but a bit of a let down to the fantasy film fan not expecting to have to deal with watching a kid hero character. I think most kids will regard this movie as a new kind of Star Wars film, and that isn't a bad thing, so power to it.

I thought the two brothers seemed to be more like gay lovers than brothers which destroyed the credibility of this sometimes affable sometimes sickening movie. Like a greeting card from the edge of what a human can tolerate in a day, it seems to deliver the goods and then backs away and starts doing cheap tricks, literally. Best avoid this ode to nowhere on a hot afternoon, it isn't that great to watch even as an art film. Sort of shades of a film Mat Damon did a few years ago about being lost in the desert, but this film has none of that other films drama. While the taxi driver character makes some valid points during the ride, the frame of the comments is to distracting for anything he says to have any real meaning. This film is to comedy/drama what Erasorhead is to action movies.

Hollywood maybe went too far in this film which alienates anyone with half a brain worse than any other modern SF film I have ever seen. Who cares what happens to a bunch of criminal rejects who specialize in total violence? Nobody, but we are supposed to care about such types in this crap film. The special effects for a newer type of Predator suck and rely on the bigger/harder/faster philosophy of dumb and cheap SF. I don't know why, but I found myself unable to 'just go along for the ride' regarding this movie, maybe because the concepts it is dealing in are just too dumb to take seriously. Worst of all the Predator films and perhaps the worst modern SF film ever made.

Which is exactly what anyone should think it is anyway. Based on a short story by Clive Barker and turned into an amazingly gory gut bucket of a movie. Did I hate it? A bit in fact. The ending pretty much sucked the big one Actually. Good plot development though, up to the point the first gallon of blood was spilled, which took about six seconds. You really cannot legitimately complain about the societies mentality being dumb when this is what ya get when ya wanna see a scary movie.This film was approved of no problem, and it is not something you would want a 13 year old to see. If its out there, they will see it. Forget about them acting out the scenes, that probably won't happen, but they will get nightmares. Lots of them. Gave me nightmares too. Brother where are you bound.

I like film, and as someone who does, I find this an intriguing made for TV movie. The film shows how talk shows are really a lot more mercenary than people might think, and that they often do nothing to help the people they claim to assist. It made me wonder about a few other things myself. There are people in the world who have never gone to 12 step programs for drug issues but who changed their life pathway. This film portrays the concept of drug issues as something completely black and terminal and heroine related. OK, I can see how that works for a film like this. Nonetheless, I have wondered if people are tagged permanently as heavy duty druggies for insignificant involvement. Maybe films like this serve a need but I think they can also fan a fire of grimness that anything drugs are mega problems. I personally think if a person messed about and then quit and never went to a 12 step, that they never 12 stepped I think probably gets them harassed in perpetuity by the proverbial "people who think they know everything", no matter how healthy their lives are in the final equation. Well, that is just my opinion. All drugs are not heroine. This film says they are. It enlightens and it darkens the view at the same time. It is primarily a cautionary tale and it is well crafted. I never see Yasmine Bleeth anymore in any shows or movies so it was nice to see her again. I find the world to generally have an opportunistic view in general regarding another persons success or failure in their life, which is disappointing, and mercenary. Very few people are capable of real insight, and that is reflected by way things happen in the world. It is good they tried to handle difficult subject matter.

Not a bad film, but I think there are too many Police oriented dramas out there. You can't watch TV at night without being inundated with cop shows. Some are good, some not so much, like cop movies. This one works because Samuel Jackson is a powerful actor who can hold an audience with the intensity of his performance. Kevin Spacey was a perfect anchor for Samuel Jackson's rocket like acting skills in this film. Lots of flying bullets and male camaraderie, perhaps more than what most women can deal with without bursting out in giggles. Very male dominated cast, and back to old school buddy lines. Like I said, maybe pushes the envelope of what works on screen in terms of how much testosterone can fit on celluloid. A bit long with a tad too many twists, and one or two goofs in the script, or maybe I am just stupid. Stupid or not, I sat through the entire thing. I gave it a seven but only because I couldn't give it a 6.8.

One of the things I found good about this film was the opening sequence where a woman driving with a daughter is approached by a female motorcycle cop and queried about if the girl with her is really a daughter. I think that the director caught an element of paranoia that does seem to exist at some levels in terms of how some Police view ordinary citizens. In the film, a dimensional rift opens up, so the cop following the woman and daughter, and the woman and daughter, are all shunted off into another version of Earth, causing the causality chain to be broken, changing what would happen next, since the motorcycle cop was following the woman driving with a daughter, with a view to "throwing a spanner into the works of a crime in progress", when there was no crime in progress. The film asks the question, how far is too far?...where local law enforcement is concerned, among other things. I think it is an abysmal thing to do to another human being. I think similar things might also occur in the world pertaining to single parent families, consisting of a father and a son, or a mother and a daughter. If the son or daughter are teens, that could be really, really, ugly. Not only would someone in law enforcement be accusing an older person of being a paedophile, they would be accusing them of being a gay paedophile,and intern they would also be labelling a younger person "gay and into older people of the same sex". The invention of the atomic bomb has nothing on what that could do. Personally, I think the female motorcycle cop in Silent Hill crossed the line, and for her dumbness she ended up being a human torch, later on in the film. Lots of thrills and chills and a good ending that I will not give away. Maybe a bit graphic here and there. More than anything, I think the film portrays how our "good society" is sometimes like being trapped on The Bounty, with Captain Bligh spouting venal clap trap and calling it brainy.

I liked the take on horror films that drives this particular film series. A bit bloody at times but that is all part of why it works as a horror film. I see many of the other reviews for films and other people seem to write so much more than I do about any given film. I think there is something to say about movies but not a lot, in terms of films in general. Watching a horror film alone is a recipe for freaking yourself out, as if the world doesn't throw enough crap at you in general. Many newer horror films, including this one, all have something in common, they are all aimed at young audiences. That is to say the 16 to 18 crowd. I suppose it works from a monetary standpoint-younger people will spend on horror films more than people over 30, nonetheless, it relegates the horror genre into being Collegiate fair only, which I think narrows the field down considerably as to the subject matter dealt with in modern horror films. Films like The Hills Have Eyes are remakes of 1970's horror, which I think isn't really going forwards. Films like Rosemary's Baby are not made anymore, surprising given the crazy pits that many apartment buildings in big cities have become over the years. Go team go is an interesting rallying cry for the horror genre. Kind of a bit tedious perhaps. This is a not bad film, but I think that because I don't mind films that have a cast mostly all under 25. On the other hand, there is really nothing else out there to watch. Hobson's Choice is no choice at all. Same goes for the I Know What You Did Last Summer movies.

For more recent horror material I liked the Urban Legends films and the Final Destination films best. I watched this show many times and found it to be overly girlie in terms of the main characters which might sound a bit stupid I suppose, given that the main characters are mainly female. Maybe it is because they are all such young, young people, in that they are not really naturally interested in things occult, for the most part, wheres....many in the real world are. I kept seeing Sarah Michelle Gellar in her role in Cruel Intentions, and perhaps that is what rubbed me the wrong way. Here is more of that...shades of rich young folks doing questionable things. Oh well, it was just a TV show. I liked the Buffy in the original film more. She was more of a fun character. I found SMG a bit hard to believe as a "goody."

...and I don't now why, because despite the fair plot line I couldn't watch an entire episode of this. Came off as trashy vampire stuff not worth the time to me for some reason. I think it probably gets better as it goes along but I can't see myself spending the time with it and I tend to watch any and all the stuff in the vampire genre. I thought the Twilight Saga was so so, pretty much aimed squarely at a younger audience, and not really rock solid as a good vampire story. Well, lets face it, vampires are hundreds of years old, so why would any want to hang out with someone who is only 15? I don't think it is so strong a concept. The dark side of my mind dismisses True Blood as pretentious Neo Gothic Twank. The more enlightened part of me says, maybe good. The two sides of me collide and I turn it off. Maybe later guys...

If I compare this newer show to the show Angel that ran for umpteen numbers of seasons, it looks like a watered down version of the prior, and better show. I think many people are into the horror genre, and would like a chance to do a show in that there genre. Welcome to Sanctuary. Someones shot at the big time of TV horror shows. That sounds like an oxymoron somehow. The big time of horror TV shows?...there is no such thing...well, maybe there is ...sort of. I thought the few episodes of this show that I saw were completely forgettable. Why?...I asked myself, clutching a bag of chips in my sweaty hands...maybe it was the cardboard cutout characters, or maybe it was the story line that drifted between a commercial for snack food and a commercial for condoms. Nothing really grabbed me about it. It was like watching production rushes for a horror film. Dark cloister her and a shot of a woman's face there, all jumbling up to make brain cake. Sigh and yawn. Will they keep going? Should they keep going, is a better question. I can't find an answer. I clutch my bag of now crushed BBQ chips even tighter. Alone. In the darkness. While a tap drips in another room. Over and over and over. It was stylish. It was better than scrunched up chips, but not much.

This show only has the thinnest connection to Gene Roddenberry, in the person of Majel Roddenberry, who had a screen play written by her husband for a show he had wanted to do called "The Starship", after the original Star Trek had been out for a bit. I don't think the show bears the Roddenberry stamp of originality. The space vehicle called Andromeda is not very great looking, and the different forms of technology that comprise the Universe of Andromeda are fuzzy and not really talked about by the shows characters. In that sense it was similar to Star Trek, since nobody on that show ever talked about how warp drive speeds represented speeds in excess of 500 times the speed of light the higher up the warp scale you went-it took a fan site to explain that years later. Cute girls and muscular men don't classic SF make and to that end, this show is like a reversal of what would make good SF. The actors are more or less well rounded which saves this show from being on at 4am as its time slot. Not great. I would have to say fair, but not dazzling. A teenager could probably come up with better, I daresay.

Interestingly, the idea for the movie that led to the creation of this show is a stone tablet called the "Byblos Calligary" discovered in 1928 that shows a still unidentified language that predates, some think, the earliest examples of written language on Earth. Very interesting. That the show is a blatant nod to the military, is just plain depressing. Just more SF flap doodle that really goes nowhere except to generate more shows in a similar vein that are equally unwatchable for anyone with half a mind. That gotta hurt. Really, I think it is bad SF. All bad SF has a combination of three elements, an unexplained artifact, followed by teams of military people followed by perplexed aliens fighting the previously mentioned military persons.Nothing new there, and nothing new here, except that they have been doing it unflaggingly for years now to the point the old bad has become the new good. For that, it deserves a Brooklyn Cheer. This show and its spin offs deserve to go the way of Space 1999, and UFO, both truly bad SF shows that were put out of their misery long ago, to the benefit of all.

It has got to be the worst thing, other than perhaps The Tomorrow People in terms of SF, ever to hit the TV screen. Dull story line and dull predictable characters make this a serious chore to watch. Good only for people who have been hit by a giant cucumber falling from a passing space ship and who are unable to stay conscious for more than one minute out of any given twenty minutes. Absolute crap says it better. Maybe appeals to the nine to eleven age group of isolated young males whose parents ignore them to spent time playing Led Zeppelin tunes on miniature kazoos. Like a dream I had once of being trapped on a planet inhabited by giant clowns who smelled like burning ice cream, this show gives me nightmares with my eyes open. Stay away from it if you want to live a happy life.

You know what they say about 1980's shows...they seemed to employ a sliding IQ scale in that the most popular shows were often the dumbest.This one is a perfect example. DH's character in this one couldn't get a job in a car wash today, but back in the 80's, he was fighting criminals, right and left. A little dim by todays standards....that is one way to put it. Goofy would be another. The car is the best character in the show. I find it amazing how these shows seem to age as time passes. Like a male go go dancer, DH dances from one scene to another, batting his fluttery eyelashes in a way that would make a call girl blush. Well, maybe it wasn't that bad. He was kind of pretty in the show though. I guess pretty counts for something. Like, pass the mascara, man.

This might seem to be just a movie that aims to be heart warming and make you feel good about life, but there is achingly more behind the victorious conclusion of this movie and little of it is heart warming. Since the days when men were judged to be good or of little use based on their size, there has been an undercurrent of thinking that sees bigger males as better males, i.e. 5-7 is dumb and 6-5 is smart. It probably comes from when there was little medicine in the past and bigger people were considered better breeding material. If modern Universities promote dumb guys as normal guys when they are really not, we are back in the stone age again. It is already happening, and many Universities are nothing more than conduits for athletes to go pro after graduation and academia counts for little. Some Universities will engage in little smear campaigns against students who are not into things like football and who see through this stuff, down to the hard core it is. Hooray for Sandra Bullock, she has a big heart and no clue about Universities, in that are often very bad paces to be in if you have any brains and don't stand eight feet tall and weigh a thousand pounds. I liked that the young black dude in this film got his life together. Great for him. Given that he could barely read, I think its wonderful that several Universities wanted him so badly. I think maybe Sandra Bullock is not aware of what damage promoting large not bright guys as University material has done to Universities. Football doesn't last forever. This policy in effect sends these guys on a collision course with humanity when they stop playing ball. Great stuff. I never met a large guy with much in the way of brains. And I think there is nothing worse than trying to turn back the clock on more brainy students at University by playing games with them as if it was grade three and Tommy can't throw a football right. Hell Yeh.

The original Star Trek show was significant in its day for having a crew that was diverse, as in from many different places, which was a good idea. The original show also had the first interracial kiss ever to be on television. So, detractors of the original show and TNG might be called bigots when all they could be are bored with the sometimes feeble story lines and the often hilarious premises contained therein. Star Trek is such a huge thing, it is so many things to so many different people. THG takes the view that women showing their legs is somehow old fashioned,as in they did that in the original show. TNG was something that should have followed the initial show sooner because the world had changed so much from the late 60's to the late 80's as to make all comparisons between the two shows an exercise that was dubious, and perhaps even odious. Lots of thrills and chills in TNG, and a continuation of the Military style format that was The Enterprise In Space. The original show came out during the Vietnam War, but there was no war on in 1987. Maybe someone thought there should have been. Will Rikers character in TNG is good, as in he hails from the country, like Bones from the first show-ouch-odious comparison. Well, at least we have these shows...as if there was nothing else to do with time than watch TV. Tsk Tsk Tsk.

Plenty of scientists have said that Star Trek was perhaps one of the most unscientific SF shows ever made. For example if a space ship goes from zero velocity to over 650 million mph in one second approx 6 million G's will compress that space ship and crew into a glowing little red ball the size of a tennis ball in under two seconds. Follow the bouncing ball. OK. Not to mention that even if they decided to play it safe and live travelling at sub light velocities, using the transporter probably wouldn't get them anywhere, except, dematerialized, and them replicated at the other end. Right. OK. Dangerous aliens called Klingons...sound like a reference to womens tights-like the ones worn by the female lower ranking crew members of the Enterprise. Very odd play on words there. Right. And OK. A science officer with the same name as a well known paediatrician who wrote books about infant care back in the 60s. There is quite a long list off odd resonances and outright scientific absurdities on the original Star Trek show. There is a great chemistry between the leading actors, who are on a scientific mission of peaceful exploration-with only one science officer among a crew of hundreds of people who all have military designations. I watched it when I was under ten. I liked the idea of visiting other planets. I still do. (I gave it a seven but perhaps it only deserves a three)