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The 10th Kingdom (2000)
Way overacted, suitable for very small children only
I really tried to like this. Unfortunately, it's made to get very young children only to laugh, and brings nothing to the table for an adult watcher. The parts played by the trolls and wolf are waaaay overacted, probably at the will of the director. Too ridiculous for this fantasy fan. I'm willing to overlook a lot, but when the acting becomes completely idiotic, I'm outta there. I tried very hard, but could not even make it through the first episode. I love most fantasy, but this stank.
The Dead (2010)
Ignore bad reviews if you're a zombie fan
I was pleasantly surprised watching The Dead after reading so many bad-ish reviews here. I am a zombie flick junkie, but that doesn't mean I will sit through badly made films. I found this rivoting and realistic. It had me on the edge of my seat, much more so than some of the American made fare I've watched. I guess some folks don't consider an African setting work worthy of their notice.
Too bad the movie won't even show up in search results, and that's not the only one. Oh, there is a page for it, but I had to search for the lead actor to get there. This is happening with irritating frequency whenever I try to look up a mid-budget foreign film. Whoever runs the site must think we shouldn't be able to locate certain films, practicing some sort of elitism. Filmed in Africa, this was definitely not some "stinker" of a film.
Prityazhenie (2017)
Mixed feelings about this one.
Off the bat, though the movie has decent special effects and CGI, the English dubbing in the version I watched was performed by people reading lines, not actually acting. The result is far less than satisfactory. Perhaps viewed in the original Russian language with subtitles, it would have come off better. Regardless, I was sucked in and soon could ignore that most of the time. My biggest peeve was the lack of understanding that a meteor shower cannot happen on Earth during the daytime, though some large ones passing by the Earth can be seen during the day on occasion. Meteor showers though smash into the side of our planet that is facing forward as it travels around the sun. I'm no huge science geek, but we are smashing into them more than they are just randomly "falling to Earth". The night side of the Earth is always facing in the direction we are traveling around the sun, so "all meteor showers happen at night" simply because that's the side that's smashing into them as we travel around the sun. The movie makers obviously didn't check their science facts or thought we were all too ignorant to know. An early scene in the movie has them "falling to earth" in broad daylight.
A Little Chaos (2014)
Compelling and Entertaining
Until now, I've never seen Kate Winslet portray a character in any movie that I could connect with. I've always thought she was miscast in Titanic. In A Little Chaos though, she draws us out n, bit by bit, by showing a great deal of vulnerability, a person bruised, but not quite broken by her paifully past. I could not hold back thevtears when she finally faces what haunts her. Good movie about a gentle soul trading a potentially treacherous path in life, willing to reach for what seems barely possible.
Vampire's Kiss (1988)
A True Stinker!
This is absolutely the worst film, and the worst Nick Cage film I've ever seen. I actually like most of his movies This stinks like yesterday's dirty diaper to the point of being paifully bad throughout, but not in such a way as to make it a cult classic. Cage is supposed to be a New York lierary agent, but speaks with a very fake "surfer dude" accent off and on. He's trying to portray what HE THINKS pretentious people sound like and how they act. On top of that, he over dramatizes every emotion, overacting in spades. I've heard people complain about his acting before, and didn't really get it. OMG. I am actually embarrassed for anyone associated with this film.
Paul, Apostle of Christ (2018)
Somewhat boring
Even though I'm not Christian, I am a fan of the old Hollywood biblical movies, but this is plain boring. The settings, artifacts, clothing, etc. all look historically accurate, but the movie makers neglected to have anyone pronounce names accurately. Everyone in the movie calls Aquila "uh-QUILL-uh". The Romans spoke Latin, and each name should be pronounced as such. Aquilla is pronounced "uh-KEE-luh", a name many of you gave heard before. They made the same mistake with another name with a "qu" in it.
Another small glaring error is the sending of a young boy to seem a street urchin, carrying a message. His hair is neatly combed and cut, he has shoes, and clothing and body are clean and unmarked.
To say the movie is boring is an understatement. It revolves entirely upon all the decisions individual Christains and families are trying to make whether to stay in Rome or leave the persecution to expand their Church in safer places. It's cleat Nero is having any he can find torn apart by wild animals in the Coliseum. They all waiting for their Christian God to give them a sign, which never came in at least the first half of the movie, when I deleted it from my DVR. Unlike older movies, they are not being proactive on how best they can serve, and spend much time only yakking about it, waiting to have Paul tell them what to do, or again waiting for future signs, instead of taking some actual action. They wail over the death of family, yet stay huddled and hidden together. Many of these people have never even met Jesus, which, again, is supposed to make them more relavent to moderm Christians, I guess.
Someone else said the movie is not preachy. Well, maybe not directly, but stays firmly on the very edge of doing that - as in pointing out the idea that the Roman official who has imprisoned Paul at Nero's order has a deathly ill child at home. We are supposed to make the connection that he is being punished for holding Paul as prisoner, though he is certain Nero burnt Rome, not the Christians. There are more examples.
I gave it 5 stars because the dialog, acting, sets and more are of convincing quality. It's the small glaring errors and the fact that the script is limited to inner turmoils of the Christians of the time being the only subject matter. The focus far less on the inner turmoils of the Roman official in charge of the prison.
All that having been said, a certain portion of contemporary Christians faced with similar moral decisions and delimmas (but admittedly, few now face actual torture and death these days) may find the movie relevant. I am non- Christian and do not belong to any organized religion, having found that such organizations addressing the spirit always seem to become corrupted by greedy men and women. Still, I enjoy any movie that shows a true strength of spirit by being proactive. I did not get that from this movie. I just saw very indecisive people not thinking for themselves and few taking any action personally to improve conditions. They just kept waiting for someone with more authority to tell them what they should do.
The only true thing I learned in this movie was the disgusting root of the expression " Roman candle". Oh yeah - and that some relatively well-made biblical movies are a snoozefest.