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Reviews
Bowling for Columbine (2002)
Triumph of the Swill
*Spoilers coming your way * I am practically speechless.... this movie was one of the most dishonest, manipulative pieces of tripe I have ever encountered. It was a despicable compilation of lies, twisted facts, misconstrued data, spliced footage and disingenuous narration. I can't even begin to list this movies specific faults. Michael Moore, a bloated crackpot, sways the audience with a totally biased film. This won an Oscar? For documentary? But it's fiction, not documentary, and moreover an ego trip. His whole bleeding heart agenda was nauseating, especially the leaving pictures of people on steps. His quiet, humble demeanor is a veneer over an arrogant, loudmouth bigot. Half of the interviews in here are with people that don't speak for half a percent of the American population. As if everyone who owns a gun is a wacko that kills for pleasure, or out of sheer rage. Please. What about the interviews with farmers who shoot wolves that kill their livestock, or rape victims who carry small arms, or hunters, or sportsmen? My grandmother owns a gun because she lives in a seedy area, rife with crime. She is also handicapped and cannot move fast. Well, what if someone tried to attack her or rob her? She'd be in an awful mess if the phone were not readily available. And does everybody with a gun have to shoot somebody? No, of course not. A lot of people are content with shooting cans, going to the shooting range, or hunting. Not everybody is a "gun nut". The statistics used are inaccurate at best. Hand gun killing also includes police putting down criminals and innocent civilians acting in self defense. What about all the knife murders or beatings? I'd like to see those stats. It's good that K-mart no longer sells bullets, now people can't get them anymore, especially extremely rare 9 mm rounds. Next lets hope they stop selling knives, so all murders using knives will be stopped. Way to blame K-mart and not the two ding dongs who shot up their school. This movie makes me want to be a lifetime member of the NRA just to spite Moore (Yeah, I know he is a member too, don't bother mentioning it, he's just a clown). The whole Heston segment was totally fabricated as well. After the Columbine bit, the "From my cold dead hands" quote was used over and over, as if he said it right then. That speech was from over a year after the massacre, in South Carolina, in response to being given a hand-crafted musket (Just look, the damn thing is in his hand). The NRA rally had also been planned months ahead of the massacre and to just not show up would have isolated the thousands of NRA members in Colorado and cost tens of thousands of dollars. He acts like Heston took a jet to Colorado in order to anger the victims as speedily as possible. Which leads us to Mr. Heston's unfair bashing. It's also easy to overlook Heston's history of marching and being active in the civil rights movement. He even marched with MLK Jr. So essentially, unless the whole segregation issue was solved seamlessly, with no violence, Heston's comments about violence being rooted in ethic mixing are just about right, but the way it was edited makes him look like some sort of monster. Bravo, you seething blob. Isn't he trying to shove the whole KKK thing down our throats anyway? Isn't that violence stemming from racial/ethnic mixing? As I seem to recall the KKK was trying to end ethnic mixing by murdering black people. Hmm...strange. And if you think their isn't violence still because of racial tension, you need to pull your head out of your ass. That whole interview is also extremely choppy, and highly edited, leading us to believe Heston is an inane racist. Most of his interviews are like that. He will ask some wise-ass question, then cut before it can be answered, leaving us to believe the person about to respond was some buffoon. Also, Moore pretends like America's history of violence is nonexistent, and compares it to Germany and the Holocaust, trying to lessen our sordid past. Guess what assclown, Hitler once said he admired the Indian Wars because of how efficiently we massacred Native Americans. Moore is a jackass, do not allow yourself to be addled by his ultraliberal BS. By the way, sweet rip-off of "Good Morning Vietnam" with the montage of violent images and "facts" over "What a wonderful world" by Louis Armstrong. I love the "Osama Bin Laden used his CIA knowledge to murder 3,000 people on September 11th" quote. I guess Osama asked the CIA how to hijack planes and crash them into buildings, as part of the usual CIA curriculum. A sizable chunk of people who like this movie just hate the Bush administration/conservatives anyway. Another large chunk of people who love this are just fruitloops who hate the United States to begin with. I am not going to go into detail, as I am running out of room, but plenty of lobotomy patients hailing from merry old England and Canada wrote some pretty scathing things about the United States. Well, here is one for you. For the most part "Bowling" is all a bunch of lies, and people just don't realize because Michael Moore pretends to be such a crusader. For someone who claims to champion the rights of the people by "exposing" corruption and lying, he is a filthy hypocrite. This movie sucked, and people shouldn't be molded into his little disciples just by watching this inflammatory crap. 1/10: Gutter ball. If you disagree, it might be time for you to join us in reality.
The Boondock Saints (1999)
The Boondock Saints
*A lot of Spoilers*
Almost all of my friends told me to watch this movie. "It's so sick", "Great Movie", "It's so badass", and "It is in a category of it's own"... well, I can honestly say that "The Boondock Saints" was one of the worst movies I have ever seen, and had it not been for Willem Dafoe, it would have easily been the worst movie of all time. (A title currently held by both The Exorcist II and The Amityville Horror). This movie is crap, there is no way around it. The cult status it has climbed to is baffling. The fact that many people enjoy this movie is beyond the realm of human comprehension. I cannot understand. It has a lousy story line, and it doesn't gel or make sense. The action is GARBAGE. I don't care what anyone says, it blows. Its cheesy, dull and anticlimactic... Half of the "action" is bad quick-cut scenes zooming in on aftermath, or shots of people shooting up a storm. For some reason people can't seem to shoot each other from ten feet away, and while dangling upside-down in a room full of gangsters, these jerks kept their bearings and shot up the joint, killing almost 10 mobsters (How can they shoot so well? why can't mobsters shoot? what was holding up the rope?). Why were they so smart? why did they pack meat for a living if they could speak multiple languages? How come he didn't die after jumping off a building at least 5 stories high into an alley? What the hell was the writer thinking? The acting, with the exception of Willem Dafoe (why did he have to crossdress? honestly...), was ghastly. The Irish accents were brutal, and the overdone villains were just as horrendous. The whole "we're catholic, but we execute Mobsters" thing was also swill. The prayer being spoken in unison was so lame!! Who writes this crap? The whole symmetric action shots of them lighting cigarettes, praying, shooting, etc. were so corny I was ashamed of myself for watching, and I was hoping nobody would come into the room and watch... I would have been reprimanded for watching such trash. The accents from the "Saints" were like a poor man's Mickey, from "Snatch"...a good movie. This movie is so flawed, so cheesy, and so boring I was shocked after I watched it. Also, another atrocity is that its being compared to Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction. How dare someone make that comparison? Those movies are masterpieces, with good actors, excellent dialogue, perfect direction, fitting music (this movie had the worst music I think I've ever heard in a film) and reasonable story lines. This movie was the polar opposite of that. Irish people should be appalled by this... anyone from Boston should be appalled by this... every person on the face of the earth should be appalled by this. What gets me the most is the alienation that people who don't like this movie feel. They become outcasts in the conversation... I Just don't get it... we need more movies like Commando, Terminator, Aliens, Rambo, Cliffhanger, or Predator... hell, even Marked for Death or Cobra (that's right, 1986 Sly Stallone) is better than this. Its a sad day when people think that Matrix movies and this refuse are excellent action films. Shed a tear for a near dead genre. I wouldn't recommend this to anyone, unless you want to watch it in order to make a subsequent film look really good. ½ star/ 5. This movie is on par with Jaws 4 and Barb Wire... despicable... May god have mercy on Troy Duffy's soul.
The Thing (1982)
Delicious
*Some Spoilers*
After watching "The Thing" I realized that it was very, very similar to Alien... with the exception of not being another overrated, often plodding Ridley Scott movie. Don't get me wrong, he is a good enough director, but Carpenter runs rings around him, and this movie goes to show that he can beat him with the same idea: a crew trapped in an area with a dangerous, shape-changing creature that is trying to kill them (the exception being that Carpenter adds more suspense and mystery by making his monster change into people, not just mutate into a hideous, alligator like creature on legs.) I like Alien a lot, but it is mostly due to the cast, which is excellent. The Thing has a cast that is also very good, but without as many familiar faces. The action sequences are better, and the violence/ gore is better as well. Obviously the focus of Alien was not gratuitous violence, but seeing people ripped apart by this ghastly creature was better than a little fake puppet jumping out of John Hurt's stomach and scurrying across a dinner table. The bleak atmosphere, lack of music (though there area few tunes here and there) and creepy noises make the ambiance better, for me anyway. Alien has a gross ship, but The Thing has desolate, arctic wasteland. It was more hopeless feeling to me. In terms of characters, The Thing is on par with Alien, even though the cast is less well known ( No big stars like Tom Skerrit, or Ian Holm). The only two actors I recognized were Kurt Russell and Keith David.... the rest of the cast is good though. The concept of paranoia also adds to this as well, with the crew killing each other... delightful. So, when its all said and done, I feel that The Thing is a stronger movie, and moreover Carpenter is (or was anyway) a better Director than Mr. Scott, whom I am growing less and less a fan of every day. My rating 5/5.
28 Days Later... (2002)
Oh goodness...
*Some Spoilers* After seeing this movie, I felt betrayed by all the advertisements -"Scary as Hell" being the first one that came to mind. It's not scary, it is a wee bit suspenseful and there are a few "boo" scares here and there. The actors are all somewhat bland and one-dimensional, and the transitions each one makes (tough to emotional, or weak to strong) were poorly handled and unlikely. Frank the father was the best character by far, followed by Major West. Selena wasn't bad either. Anyway, this movie is essentially a rip off of every other zombie movie I have ever seen. In particular "Dawn of the Dead" and "Day of the Dead". The whole evil hidden military agenda was straight from Day, as well as the idea of taking a zombie prisoner. The opening empty streets with newspapers giving Jim his clues was also directly lifted. The refueling station scene was very reminiscent of Dawn, I must say, especially with the child attacking the lead character in the office ... hmm. This movie is also addled by too much artsy cinematography of scenic hillsides and horses, etc. A lot of the films action is based on stupid mistakes as well. Soldiers forgetting how to fight, people not taking guns, people hiding and waiting to get killed, people walking into dark rooms by themselves... silly cliché stuff. However, despite the plethora downfalls I was still somewhat amused. It should have been better, and it was frustrating to watch, but it was a decent movie. It was better than "The Italian Job" anyway, the movie I had seen a few weeks prior. 2.5/5 stars.