Reviews

I've just come back from seeing it, my verdict. Good, not quite as good as Iron Man but still pretty decent and definitely better than Hulk 2003. Edward Norton was great and a better Banner than Eric Bana, Tim Roth also made a great Villain, and I thought Liv Tyler was on par with Jennifer Connely.

The script was good and the story wasn't dumbed down too much like I thought it might've been. There's depth to the character of Banner and the way they made him a fugitive on the run in search of a cure brought it closer in tone to the series.

The cgi effects I wasn't overtly impressed with even though they are cool, the hulk didn't look anymore realistic to me than he did in 2003. It was good to hear him speak in this one, especially as Lou Ferrigno provided the voice, just like he did in the 90's cartoon series, but I thought they could have let him talk a bit more to help give him more of a personality. They certainly tried to make him a lot more scary in it with his animalistic growling etc and he does make the previous version seem tame in comparison.

The action was at it's best during the end battle between the hulk and the abomination, it was quite quite long and the most exciting part of the film.

The thing I liked best about it, being a fan of the original series was the references, they were quite a few of them.

Although overall not a perfect film, it's still quite satisfying and more entertaining than the previous Hulk film.

After just seeing the movie, I'm glad to say I really enjoyed it. As it opens and we get the view of Krypton from the opposite side, I was annoyed that we only hear half of the Planet Krypton theme, and I thought it was some sort of bad omen that there would be lots of similar things that would annoy me, but actually there wasn't much that I didn't like.

The Jor El scenes were really well done, even though the scenes with Lara in Lester's cut are fine, Brando's Jor El really elevates them and to me comes across as more emotionally charged, because the relationship with Kal El and his holographic father was established in the first movie, unlike the relationship with his mother, also there's no pay off to that relationship, where as with Jor El's sacrifice there is in this version.

The screen test footage scene really surprised me, it worked far better than I'd imagined, the editing of those 2 separate screen tests is so well done, that without the changing of Reeve's hair style you wouldn't notice any other real discrepancies.

The Metropolis battle works so much better without the gags too, and the one bit that was left in, the man on the roller skates works alright and isn't too much because it's not accompanied by a host of other campy gags. The little Donner additions like Superman smashing through the torch of statue of liberty and the extra few flying shots, look so cool, far better than any over the over top cgi flying scenes in Superman Returns, that zoom across the screen so fast you can barely notice them.

I don't miss the exclusion of the Paris sequence at all, except for the alley change, but this I accept as necessary for this version. The scene with Non smashing his way through the Daily Planet is also so much more effective in this version, the sound effects really make him sound like an unstoppable behemoth.

A few things I didn't like, there were plenty of lines towards the 2nd half that I noticed were dubbed even though these lines appear with the original actors voices in the Lester cut. though on the whole I liked the new sound effects, there were bits I found more effective in Lester's version, such as the Superman deflecting Zod's heat vision with the side view mirror. Also I do see now why people have complained about cutting from small scenes with Lois and Clark/Superman with large scenes of Luthor, the problem comes from using as little Lester footage as possible. Those romantic scenes at the fortress of Solitude should have been longer, adding Lester's soufflé scene would have been fine as it's in the original script and would have padded out those scenes abit, also Superman's fetching of the flower really is a scene I feel should have been left in.

The problems with the edited music tracks were somewhat jarring in some scenes too, besides the opening like i've already mentioned, the way its edited during the opening credits too is so obvious, but in a lot of scenes we have Williams music replacing Thorne's exact rendition of those cues and I liked that.

So overall there were a few things I missed in this cut, but I'll always be able to view them in the original theatrical cut, on the whole it worked better than I thought it could and it's a real delight to view all these alternate scenes, so I really enjoyed the Donner Cut.

My God, how anyone could call this film good I don't know, I believe this is Polanski's worst film and not only that but of the many adaptations I've seen of Oliver Twist this is by far the worst, the acting, script and direction were all dire! The complex plot of the novel is really simplified even more so than in the musical. It is as though Polanski is aiming to appeal to a younger audience, after all let us not forget his fondness for children ;). Disgarding the major plot point of the story, Oliver's true identity, was a grave mistake and it shows, in other adaptations the way in which Oliver's parentage is discovered plays a good part in engaging our attention. Where as in this travesty all we get is a simple little tale in which the only outcome is Oliver gets to live happily ever after with the Brownlow family.

After I'd seen the film I couldn't believe that it had received such positive critical acclaim. In fact it was so bad that I was very tempted to to walk out early in the film, and having seen the entire shoddy production, I wish I had!