Reviews

The people behind this film are notorious for making movies meant to be "so bad it's good" a la Sharknado. You'll see the same faces involved in Jurassic Shark and Raiders of the Lost Shark. I was introduced to these movies through I Hate Everything's review of Jurassic Shark and went on to watch Raiders of the Lost Shark, then ultimately this movie. With the two shark movies as the basis, Avenging Force is surprisingly good. It's still not a great movie but it has a lot more charm and better production in general than later works by the same crew. It's at least worth a watch if you like amateur films that don't have a budget but made a good attempt.

I'm pretty annoyed fresh off of watching this. As so many other reviews have said, the visual and musical side of this is fantastic, to the point that I remarked to my significant other that "this would have worked with the idle parts cut out and no dialogue at all." Unfortunately, this movie has a plot thin enough that it almost belongs in a 90s porno. The story is woefully neglected. In the first 20 minutes, you find yourself excited to see how things develop because of how exquisite the presentation is. There is unfortunately zero payoff for your investment. The rules of the world are not explained. The quirks that make the premise of the story so interesting are left completely undeveloped. You don't care about what happens because you aren't told why you should care. This isn't the first Netflix-produced anime movie I've seen with this issue, either; it seems like Netflix anime is produced like a fan fiction with a huge budget. Everything looks amazing on the outside, yet the story could have been written on notebook paper by a hormonal eighth-grader. I wanted so badly for this to dig into the interesting world they started to build, but by the end there was nothing but a concrete foundation and some "uwu I wuv you" to work with.

The thing I resent the most is all the higher ratings just for the audiovisual work. The missing story merits a 5/10 at absolute best, but I rated it down because others rated it up foolishly and someone has to counter such garbage.

I am very lenient with movies. I give them a good chance to get past the rocky introductory parts and exposition. I wanted to give this one a chance because the start of it was clearly setting it up to be something I often enjoy, : a dark, suspenseful drama with complex characters and layers of secrets. Unfortunately, I made it around half an hour in and bailed out. It felt like it had gone on for an hour, and that 30 minutes should have been cut down to about 8 minutes of content. One of my most common criticisms of films is that they could have been cut down without losing anything important and this is clearly a major offender in that regard. The actors are clearly quite good, but their dialogue is far too short and widely spaced out. Shots are held for far too long. Directors usually think they're setting the desired mood smartly by dragging things out to force a stronger impression when they're really boring the audience and killing off the desired effect instead.

The best part was the part where a car was burning. The wide shot at twilight was beautiful and the narration over it was appropriately paced and delivered. It was by far the most competently done part that I witnessed. It would be nice if the director understood that longer doesn't mean better; I would probably have seen it through if they made every shot as competent as that one and tossed out all the dead air that adds nothing to the story whatsoever.

I have serious questions about other reviewers that rated this movie highly. The main character spends most of the start of the film not behaving like someone who cares about what's happening. "Slow" is a generous description of the pace. There is no way to suspend disbelief with this quantity of BS slapping you in the face. It's hard to pinpoint the issues because because they permeate the entire production. This would have worked a lot better as a 20-minute short film, not a feature-length production with a decent budget and a big name.

There's another single-person, single-location film called Buried (2010) that does almost everything right and that makes this one look terrible by comparison. Buried was in a confined location with one person and very few props, yet it managed to grip the audience for over an hour, keeping everything interesting and suspenseful despite the extreme limitations. Hours is the anti-Buried: you don't care about anyone in the film, nothing interesting happens, and anything that might be interesting and that gets your hopes up is quickly ruined by something stupid, unrealistic, and contrived that takes you out of what little immersion you got into in the first place.

I want a refund and I watched it for free. Someone needs to pay me for that time I'll never get back. If you want to watch a bad movie that's entertaining then The Room is a far better waste of time.

I watched this movie based largely on the high rating (7.5 as of this review) and I am amazed that it doesn't have lower ratings. The sheer number of 10/10 reviews is insane. This movie is surprisingly well-made for something that barely has any actual character development and story. The climax of the movie is over 90% into the run time and feels random and forced. I've seen it called a "slow burn" in reviews but that's putting it very mildly; there's not a lot to burn in the first place and the movie takes its sweet time dripping out plot fragments.

My top complaint about movies that I have issues with us that they would have been vastly better movies if they were cut down. This movie is a major offender in this regard; it doesn't have enough of a story to justify over 90 minutes of screen time and the majority of the time is spent dragging things that don't matter out. If this were cut down into a 30-minute short film then it would have been decent. As it stands, I found myself not caring about the characters and wishing it would just end for the latter half.

The cherry on top of the too-slow burn sundae is that the main characters' major "growth" far too late into the film was poorly done and not believable. Most of their interaction is one way, then suddenly it changes, with no meaningful struggle to justify it. There is no payoff. It's not heartwarming. It's not enjoyable. Anyone who gave this 10/10 needs to have their head examined.

This movie brings up an astonishing number of possibilities for plot advancement. It had a solid cast that gave excellent performances. It had a load of interesting ideas at the beginning. There was so much that was right about this movie, so why give it one star?

It squandered everything that it could be and crashed into the ground.

I don't want to give away spoilers, so I can't explain in much detail, but the two problems that killed this film were the complete waste of a setup given the ultimate path taken, and the an ending that is unsatisfying and uninteresting. The ending feels like it was set up to lead into a sequel, but I'm not aware of one existing. If I were to liken it to a restaurant visit, this film is like a mouth-watering menu with great prices and fabulous pictures that invoke your curiosity, but the food that you received being unimpressive fast food that isn't what you ordered and is inexplicably covered in a ton of tartar sauce because it's always better to surprise the customers than not, isn't it?

I really feel like this film is the best film at one thing only: snatching failure from the jaws of success. So much potential flushed right down the toilet, and all it left behind was tartar sauce and frustration.

This is definitely one of the very best animated movies I've ever seen in modern times, and the reviews already make that clear. What I see in this movie that others haven't brought up is that it's a great story for fathers, despite not having any actual fatherhood in the story. The personal struggles of Ralph throughout the movie and as he meets the other main character are a pretty good reflection of what it's like to become a dad. Mixed emotions, uncertainty about one's place after a long time in the same path, making all kinds of mistakes--it's basically all there. In a society where women are valued and men are disposable, this story does a great job of showing off the humanity behind the social expectations of masculinity. It's heartwarming to see the growth of a flawed outcast as he finds his place in society, learns how to change his weaknesses into strengths, learns to rely on others to help him with what he can't accomplish on his own, and becomes a positive influence on others as he finds his own happiness.

I've narrowly dodged dropping spoilers so that you can see what I'm talking about for yourself if you haven't already watched this movie. Even if you're not in the target demographics (kids and thirty-something males) you can take a lot of good things away from this movie. It's absolutely worth a watch. If this review is still around in 20 years,l and you saw this as a kid, give it another watch and you'll get so much more out of it.

As of this review, the rating on this movie is in the 5/10 range. When I look at what the negative reviews are saying, it becomes clear that the bad reviews come from reviewers who are treating this movie like it's supposed to be a serious adult comedy, but it's NOT that kind of movie. It's clearly meant to be a light-hearted movie that is aimed at being fun for younger kids. It's not made for adults; it's absurd and childish and fun, designed to be watchable for 10-year-olds while still being appropriate enough for a 5-year-old to watch and enjoy too.

The movie is definitely absurd in a lot of ways, and several things won't quite add up. Don't take it seriously at all and you'll probably enjoy it. Your kids surely will.

Too many reviewers here have already said everything that can be said about this terrible attempt at a morality tale, but I just had to throw my hat in the ring on it. This "movie" is a train wreck. Every character is a grossly exaggerated caricature and has skin thinner than tracing paper. The only way to enjoy or appreciate it is to relentlessly mock it from start to finish. No one in this movie acts like a real person and the "bullying" is the tamest thing I've ever seen in my life. Imagine a tough angry merciless biker gangster with a spike collar approaching you with a chain.and a menacing look, then imagine a dog walking slowly towards you. This movie would be the dog. I feel bad for the actors for having to put their names on this insufferable "family film."

Only watch this if you want to mock it without mercy.

This animated short is one of James Rolfe's rare animated works and arguably one of the best. As with most James Rolfe animations, the visual quality and animations themselves are quite rough around the edges and not fluid at all, but look past that for a moment (animation is hard and James isn't a seasoned animator) and you'll be treated to a hilarious "Space Ghost Coast to Coast" parody with classic Rolfe humor. It's five minutes long so I can't write much more without spoiling the fun. Suffice it to say that it's worth a watch and even if you don't like it afterwards you've only wasted five minutes of your life. It's a refreshing change from Rolfe's other work and I always enjoy re-watching it.

The "most helpful review" as of the time of this review is one that proclaims "the atmosphere is so thick you could cut it with a chainsaw" and pulls out a fandom gatekeeper card with "if you haven't seen this cult masterpiece don't call yourself a horror buff." I am here to tell you that this 10/10 review could not be more wrong and that you will benefit greatly from not bothering to watch this film.

First and foremost, let's get the gore out of the way. I'm sure for the time it was pretty good but it is unconvincing and has aged poorly. The blood is runny like fruit punch and there is an unfortunate combination of actors doing things a person would simply never do and shots lingering far too long. Some of the effects are well done but too many of them are bad for reasons other than the models used for the effects. Way too much time is spent on lingering gore shots.

Oh dear god, the music. The music is terrifically inappropriate for a horror film. It's hard to explain just how out of place it feels. Imagine you see a gory scene and in the middle of the gory scene you start hearing a song that sounds like it should have a 1970s movie detective looking for clues in a building with no tension whatsoever. Yeah, it's really that bad. For a movie that's notorious for gore and connections to Hell the music is horrible.

I watched in English but it's almost certainly a dubbed film. The dubbing is atrocious but it's also weirdly good-seeming in parts. The verbiage chosen in some areas (mostly towards the start) matches mouth movements very well and doesn't sound too unnatural for English...but it never quite seems right and it gets far, far worse as the movie goes on. I had subtitles on for some of the time as well and the subtitles don't match the verbal utterances well at all. Both are so bad that it's hard to look past it. Maybe it'd be better if I turned the audio off and just watched in silence with the subtitles...

The plot? It's simplistic. It's one of those "and then this happens...and then this happens...and then this happens..." movies. The structure of the story is garbage. We are not led to like or care about any of the characters. There are a couple of jump scares that got me but the horror atmosphere is simply not there. You know something bad is going to happen long before it happens and the thing that happens is likely to be poorly executed. Character motivations are never clearly expressed except for the main female character to some small extent. This movie's concept had a lot of potential but the execution is just plain c***.

If you don't see this film, you will miss nothing. It doesn't even have the "so bad it's good" thing going for it. It was not completely incompetent but it was bad enough that I never want to see it again, not even ironically.

I did not have the luxury of seeing this in my youth, but I did watch it in early adulthood out of curiosity and my memories of that experience were worth rating it 6 out of 10. However, after watching a review of the movie by James Rolfe, I was inspired to watch it again and set aside my prejudices stemming from the notorious reputation of badness this movie drags behind it. It was an eye-opening experience.

Super Mario Bros. is a very good movie that became scorned in the public eye because of its association with the video game of the same title and being essentially the first major motion picture based on a video game. It also had the misfortune of being preceded by the Super Mario Bros. Super Show which has a very different format and probably set up a lot of unfair expectations as to what a Mario movie would be like. If we examine the Super Mario Bros. video game with the lens of a person craving a story, we find that there isn't much to go on. The plot is "a plumber saves a princess from a reptilian monster in a castle" and that's it. There are precious few details beyond that. The various enemies and objects and characters only exist for the purpose of enabling the game mechanics to function. Everything in the video game lacks any sort of deeper meaning; the only unifying elements (and I use that term somewhat loosely) are mushrooms, turtles, and pipes. What else could you expect from an 8-bit era platforming game? My point is this: as an inspiration for a full-blown story, the video game is effectively a one-sentence writing prompt. It shouldn't be a surprise that a Super Mario Bros. live-action movie is based largely on interpretation of the vague elements offered up in the video game. For the rest of the review, let's set aside the video game and focus on the movie as an independent work.

Super Mario Bros. has all the elements of a great family-friendly action/fantasy movie. Two everyday normal guys trying to make a living stumble into events that toss up their normal lives and they wind up in a dystopian place. There are elements of sci-fi and film noir that are executed very well, but the film also never takes itself too seriously and the comedy is always around to lighten things up. In a lot of ways, this film is reminiscent of Who Framed Roger Rabbit, a work that is arguably one of the best movies ever made. There are obvious inspirations from other classics such as Blade Runner and Mad Max.

It's not without its flaws, of course. There are some dull or just plain stupid moments that could have been cut down or omitted. Luigi's character sometimes acts in ways that have no believable motivation for doing so, even by the loose standards of a fantasy story in a family film. There are a lot of interesting elements that go unexplained which is a bit disappointing. There is a large set of people that are supposed to be vastly different but really just look like plain old humans in tasteless outfits and funny hairstyles (I can't explain in any more detail without spoilers but you'll know who I'm referencing when you get there) which is even more ridiculous because there is yet another closely related set of people that DO actually look different.

Fortunately, the flaws don't detract very much from the overall enjoyment of the film. It's actually a lot of fun to look for the references to the elements from the video game; some are in-your-face obvious while some are subtle enough that you probably won't catch them the first time you watch the movie.

I was surprised by this "bad movie." It was a lot more fun to watch than its reputation would have us all believe. If it hadn't been tied to such a vague video game and had to follow in the footsteps of the Super Show, this could have easily become a classic family film from the early 1990s. Many other reviewers claim to have enjoyed it in spite of its reputation and I'm happy to join them.

I admit it: I'm a bit of a James Rolfe fanboy. I have thoroughly enjoyed most of what James has created over the past 20+ years. Like many, I discovered him through his Angry Video Game Nerd series and eventually explored his other work. James is a very talented creator; many of his non-AVGN reviews and short films are thoroughly enjoyable and inspiring. Many aspiring filmmakers consider James Rolfe to be the catalyst for getting them off their butts and finally making their movies. I consider myself one of them. I want to see him make a new (non-AVGN) original film that recaptures the spirit of his college films and jazzes it up with the skills he has honed since then.

What does this have to do with "James and Mike Mondays?" you might be asking. Well...watch his college shorts "Cinemaphobia" and "Legend of the Blue Hole," then watch "AVGN - Ikari Warriors," then watch whatever the latest episode of "James and Mike Mondays" is and you'll see the stark contrast. Where James' scripted productions contain great humor or interesting plots, J&MM contains two guys sitting on a couch and rambling. Occasionally there will be a humorous random thing, but this is not typical. It's unscripted so there is no opportunity to plan the content and make sure it will be interesting enough as a show...which is fine as long as you're good at improv comedy, but James has said in his documentaries that he's not an improvisational kind of guy. It's not yet another "Let's Play" video, a genre that is so shallow and done to death and flooded with participants that I don't care if I never see another one again. At the same time, it's not really about sparking a fun interaction between James and Mike either.

James and Mike Mondays doesn't really feel like anything at all, and that's my entire beef with it. It leaves the viewer with the impression that the videos only exist to keep YouTube views and watch minutes rolling in and to keep audiences engaged. That's totally fine as long as there's something compelling to watch in there, but there is very little about James and Mike Mondays that inspires me to watch the next "episode" and there is no re-watch value.

From a long-time fan of James Rolfe and an avid watcher of his productions, I feel like it's ultimately a waste of his talent and time.

Note: I am NOT affiliated with anyone involved on this film. This is an independent review.

I discovered this movie through an Internet comment by its creator that linked to it on YouTube. It is definitely a flawed work, though many low-budget works tend to be out of necessity. That being said, once you get past the somewhat unconvincing acting and the fact that practically the entire ship is obviously made of spray-painted corrugated cardboard, it actually has a lot of charm to it. To illustrate: someone in the same room (who doesn't have the tolerance for crappy productions that I do) started off with a dismissive "what are you watching?" and by the halfway point was actually watching the movie.

First, the bad because there's surprisingly not a lot of that: this movie's low budget is visually obvious and the acting is not very convincing. For some people the acting will be a deal-breaker, but the movie is a comedy and the funny stuff is not damaged by it (and sometimes it even works better.) It is painfully clear that the vast majority of the ship is cheap stuff that was painted to look like ship stuff. Some of the characters and their traits are just plain weird for no real reason; that is, the quirks never prove important later and aren't funny. It would have been nice to have more character development overall. I don't recall ever seeing a single non-CG shot with any camera motion; the whole movie seems to have been shot with a tripod, though it's arguably better that way because so many other low-budget films suffer from annoying constant hand-held camera shake from start to finish. There are obvious problems in execution that will turn general audiences away, labeling this as a "bad movie." With the bad side taken into account, everything else is surprisingly good! If the budget was really only $10,000 then the people behind this movie should be running the financial side of a national government. There's quite a bit of low-budget 3D CG (several complex spaceships and planetary bodies) that works quite well. Something like 90% of the inside environment is made of spray-painted and duct taped cardboard...but these people are MASTERS of cardboard construction! It's so painfully obvious that the place is made of cardboard and fiber packaging materials and duct tape and random hardware store parts and yet there is so much thought put into it that one can't help but admire it all. I've noticed everything from an old credit card reader spray-painted to match the cardboard to the back plate of an old flat-panel TV attached to the wall to an aluminum ladder with string lights attached.

Sure, the acting isn't great...but it's good enough that the comedy generally works and the character quirks are sometimes better off with the bad acting than they would be with Shatner-grade expressiveness. The movie causes the viewer to frequently question the sanity of the characters, sometimes feeling more like low-budget horror more than low-budget comedy. The story itself isn't the greatest screenplay ever made, but it's decently put together. Conflicts get resolved in a reasonable time frame and in a satisfying way. There's some interesting commentary on modern life if you're paying enough attention to notice it. The color in the movie could have used grading (all the colors feel pretty flat) but the lighting is good and makes up for it. I would have liked some more occasional background music but the overall sound design is so good that I wasn't distracted by bad sound...well, except for a couple of klaxons that would abruptly stop in the middle of a loud sound instead of finishing out the sound and going quiet.

The books you catch them reading are pretty funny too. There are a lot of random "ha!" moments to be had, and that's a lot of the charm in the movie. I do wonder where all those Popsicle sticks came from.

Bottom line: if you give it a chance and look past the initial "bad movie" impression, there is a diamond in the rough within Space Trucker Bruce. It isn't going to be everyone's cup of tea because the "standards" set by multi-million dollar Hollywood blockbusters have made us think that frenetic pacing, cookie-cutter "Save the Cat!" story beats, and extremely expensive 3D CG are what make a movie good. For those who can get past the fact that this isn't a high-dollar Transformers or comic book movie, it's fun to watch and definitely worth 87 minutes of your time.

The director has posted the film on YouTube for free at the following URL if you'd like to watch it: https://youtu.be/kcOaAqGBWLo

This film is terrible on so many levels that it hurts to even remember it. I can't believe that so many other reviewers are so dense and mindless that they'll defend this movie adamantly. No, it is not "misunderstood." It is not a complex art film meant to be viewed with an understanding of some deep external context. This movie was sold to us as "300 but with badass women" and instead we get "I wish I was Inception but good luck finding the story in this pile of debris...oh, and here's some random fast-paced feminine butts and CG explosions to stare at so you don't feel like you were completely ripped off by the trailers."

There are those who say it's a glorious film that bathes in the light of strong female empowerment. Excuse me, but did you and I watch the same movie? I won't drop any spoilers but the "non-Inception" story AND the "Inception level one" story are so strongly the opposite of female empowerment that no one who isn't looking at the film through rose-colored glasses can hold it up as such. So much of this film is riddled with grossly unrealistic caricatures of evil males brutalizing fragile and helpless young women; an ideal feminist tale this definitely is not, yet many reviewers and even the actresses themselves have somehow eaten this lie up and regurgitated it ad nauseam.

For a moment, let's ignore the fact that both men and women are shown as hyperbolic representations of stereotypes. Let's ignore the lie told by the trailers showing an awesome CG-laden action extravaganza with awesome female heroes. The plot...isn't! This entire film attempts to be "psychologically deep" and fails so miserably that it is simply confusing and reeks of "artsy for the sake of artsy." Sucker Punch is the prime example of failure to execute the Inception style of story layering. There is essentially zero actual connection between the layers. There is one actual story that very little of the film spends time on and that is not explained or developed enough to be satisfying. The remaining chunks of the film focus on a completely different story that doesn't matter and a story within that story that matters even less. The connections between these three completely different plots are tenuous at best. It's difficult enough to write a single detailed plot and maintain continuity and consistency, so it comes as no surprise when this travesty tries to coarsely mush three mostly unrelated plots together and ultimately leaves them on the kitchen counter to rot.

The only reason I gave this film more than one star is the fantastic visuals within the action sequences. We were sold a film that was a sort of video game-like steampunk/fantasy 300 film with strong women that vaguely remind us of Samus Aran and that's what we all wanted to see. Granted, there are some serious problems with the action itself such as the obvious invulnerability of our heroes, but the visuals are hugely successful as eye candy. Everything else in the film resembled a dropped vase glued back together by a three-year-old, yet the action visuals are a work of art that could easily stand on their own. Even the plot underlying the action could have worked with a lot more thought and a lot more screen time.

This movie was supposed to be great. It wasn't. It developed a rabid fan base of mindless and tasteless movie-goers, but it seems like anything terrible that hits the big screen manages to vacuum up a pile of those. Don't waste your time seeing this. You can probably find the action stuff on a video site somewhere if you're interested in seeing those parts, but if you watch the actual film, you'll regret it and you'll never get that time back. If you want an attractive, strong female lead that is given excellent character development and beats the crap out of everyone that wrongs her, you're better off re-watching Kill Bill, because Sucker Punch doesn't even come close.

This film has a lot of great things going for it. There is an experimental element in the exposition of "parallel realities" that is a little annoying at first but becomes more effective as the film progresses. In fact, the film uses quite a few techniques that are unconventional, and for the most part they are effective. The central story is obviously a love story, and by now it isn't anything special on its own; you've probably seen this story before, and other reviewers have already covered much of the obvious influences already. The magic is in its execution, and that's where things both work wonderfully and fall apart.

As I said, many unconventional ways of presenting the story are used very effectively; I'd not rate the film so highly otherwise. The core of the film is solid. The three stars that I took away come from two major problems: an ambiguous ending and the use of obnoxiously annoying framing choices that every indie film hipster seems to be all about using nowadays.

I hate all film endings where the ending is ambiguous. I liken it to ripping the last few pages out of one's favorite novel. Movies where the loose ends are left untied leave me with that feeling you might get if handed a plate of delicious food and then having the plate unexpectedly taken away when you're only half done eating. There is nothing more to say about this problem; some people aren't bothered by it, but I see it as either laziness or being "artsy" to the detriment of your storytelling.

The far more serious problem is the one where the "rule of thirds" and other fundamental image composition guidelines are thrown out the window. There are some shots where this works well because the violation of the rule fits with that aspect of the narrative. However, there are far more instances where the framing choices just look plain stupid and make no sense. Leaving a lot of empty frame space behind and/or above the actor's head is a compositional no-no and should only be done in rare instances, but like many other smaller indie films released in the past couple of years, this one falls victim to the director trying too hard to be edgy and clever. It is the Tragedy of the Cinematic Hipster. They've randomly forgotten that the point is to tell a story and that producing a film for mass consumption isn't an artsy film school assignment. A story should work BECAUSE of the camera work, not IN SPITE of it. The overall film suffers a bit; it is distracting at best and obnoxious at worst.

If the director's future films spend less time trying to be so edgy, there is a lot of potential for amazing work, but it's too late to save Comet from the indie hipster disease. Still, it's definitely a film worth seeing, and after all of my whining, that's pretty impressive.

Due to the nature of the film, I must explain prior to my review that I am not in any way a "fan" of Brad Jones or Cinema Snob. My introduction to his work came very indirectly through his ties to Nostalgia Critic and Channel Awesome. I do not have the experience needed to fully appreciate a "made just for fans" movie; this is my introduction to the work of Brad Jones.

There are some negative aspects that I feel must be discussed upfront. The cinematography is very much amateur-grade: lots of hand-held camera shake, camera shake where there was no excuse for not using a tripod such as stationary establishing shots of houses, complete failure to add proper lighting, select shots that are poorly framed, and continuity errors across cuts between different viewing angles of the same shot (bottles changing position on tables and a hand that vanishes are the most egregious errors that come to mind.) The sound design leaves A LOT to be desired as well, from the audio levels in the same conversation being significantly different between speakers to the ambient sound of traffic suddenly cutting in when the POV changes. The movie is two hours long but probably could have been executed in 90 minutes if some of the unnecessarily slow parts were cleaned up. There are some instances where the acting is unconvincing. If this was even a "low-budget film" by the industry definition, this would be enough to earn it a review that boiled down to "what is this crap?"

Fortunately, this isn't such a film, and I didn't go in expecting anything with apparent high production values. This film was obviously a labor of love and provided something for a bunch of like-minded friends to work together on. The great thing about this film is that it doesn't even try to take itself seriously. It's obviously made to appeal to people who are "in" on Brad Jones' previous work, but despite being an "outsider," I found myself able to enjoy it. Being able to appreciate the "WTF? factor" is crucial to enjoyment of this film, because that's what makes it amusing. On the surface, it's littered with flat, minimally expressive dialogue, but that's what makes the more ridiculous parts so worthwhile. You find yourself caught off-guard and suddenly laughing at what seemed like a contrived, knuckle-dragging story just seconds earlier.

I can forgive amateur production if the story is decent and the execution is clever. This film was hard to watch in the beginning since I was not used to the "flat" dialogue and sneaky subtle humor, but by the time the credits rolled, I found myself wanting to watch it again, if for no other reason than to pick up on the subtle humor I missed. I also appreciated the special effects; they can be quite a treat, and it's fun to stop the video and try to figure out how they pulled them off.

If you'd like to see a no-budget film that's executed pretty well, this is definitely a good choice. It's not a very serious film, but it isn't supposed to be, and while I am certain that some people would never be capable of appreciating it, you owe it to yourself to give it a chance.

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EDIT/UPDATE: I've seen this film many times over now, and having done so brings some new perspectives. I've watched some key Cinema Snob reviews that get referenced in this film and realized that I would have enjoyed it more had I seen these episodes first. There seems to be a plethora of in-jokes and references to Cinema Snob episodes. This is both understandable and acceptable, but as a newcomer to the works of Brad Jones it detracts from the enjoyment of the film a bit due to not understanding the meaning behind these seemingly random utterances. I've also noticed that enjoyment of the story drops sharply as it transitions away from snarky comedy halfway through. As with Brad's previous film Paranoia, the later parts of the film have issues relating to continuity, transitions, and too many scenes dragging on for far too long. Audio and lighting problems are still present and obvious when they happen...and dear lord, SO MANY of the supporting characters are NOT convincing actors at all!

All of that being said, each watch of The Cinema Snob Movie has become more and more enjoyable to watch every time I see it, especially as I look up the incredible number of actors and films name-dropped throughout and better understand what they're talking about. The cringey moments of really bad acting start to become funny as well. If you want a movie that can both feed into a MST3K/RiffTrax mocking session with your friends and give you a bunch of genuine laughs as well, you'll definitely appreciate this one. As far as no-budget feature-length films by amateurs goes, it's very hard to find much better, and if you have an interest in making your own films, you can learn a lot by watching it, especially from the commentary tracks on the DVD.

Action! Treasure! Bikinis! Water! On the surface, Deep Gold promises the potential viewer an action-packed film that you'll love so much, you'll keep coming back to see it again and again. The problem with promising something huge is that it's hard to deliver on that promise, and Deep Gold certainly failed to deliver.

The main reason I'm writing this review is because this film was awful enough to be memorable as one of the only movies I ever recall throwing away immediately after watching. Deep Gold seems like it might be a decent movie when you start watching it, but the way in which the plot progresses is simply uninteresting. There isn't anything about the characters that makes them stand out. The words "lackluster" and "generic" keep coming to mind even as I write this, and it's true: you've seen this same basic story repeated many times over in much more exciting movies. The worst part is that the action sequences are poorly cut, poorly choreographed, and aren't as enjoyable as they seem to believe they are. They're also sometimes awkward and annoying, but the music is rapid and intense, leading to a bizarre, unpleasant feeling of dissonance that is difficult to explain.

I will admit that there are a few visually interesting aspects, particularly since it was shot in the Philippines. There are plenty of boats and other water-related things that a land-locked soul might enjoy seeing, and also some shots in mountains and forests that look different from what we're used to seeing in many Hollywood productions. Reasonably attractive women in bathing suits, shiny black pants, and light clothing are included as an attempt at providing some mild titillation. Unfortunately, this "eye candy" doesn't save Deep Gold from its problems.

What really irked me after being disappointed enough to toss the film directly into the trash can was coming to IMDb out of curiosity and seeing a lot of highly rated reviews. They couldn't sound more like paid shill reviews if they tried. I am surprised that they are still up as of December 2015.

This is NOT a film that you're going to enjoy enough to want to watch twice, but you might want to watch it once just to increase your appreciation of other (better) films, or perhaps if you have a serious thing for Filipino ladies in films and don't care about the plot.