Change Your Image
Hylo Bates
Reviews
Pupendo (2003)
A great movie about life behind the Iron Curtain
A wonderful film. Of course, it's more enjoyable for those who lived in Czechoslovakia in the 80s, but the movies does have a universal appeal, as well. It deals with a difficult and complex time with humor, yet retains a realistic feel. I highly recommend this movie.
Plot: The film follows two families living in Prague during the 1980s. Each family deals with living in the Communist system in different ways, trying to survive as best they can while still remaining true to themselves.
Face/Off (1997)
One of the worst movies I've ever seen.
I never bothered seeing this movie, because I could tell by the previews it was horrible. I just saw it tonight, though, because it was on somewhere I was forced to be. It lived up to my pre-judgement of it and more. I thought the plot idea was ridiculous to an unvelievable degree, but it was actually outdone and rendered rather tame by the absolutely-no, obscenely-farcical `action' scenes. There's really no need to go into specifics. The movie started out horribly-with a ridiculous fight scene-and just got worse, and worse, and worse, and worse. No redeeming qualities what-so-ever.
I've seen worse movies
but for star-power and big-budget, major studio films, I think this has got to be the worst.
Signs (2002)
Entertaining movie...funny, suspenseful, all ruined by horrible ending.
I was very disappointed by this film and surprised that M. Night Shyamalan would produce a work like it.
First off, though, the positive: I like Shyamalan's sense of humor, and it was on display in this movie as in his others. The scene when Graham comes home to find Merrill on the couch with the children, glued to the TV, and Merrill has joined the children in wearing tin-foil hats
that was great. As was the dialogue between Merrill and the Sherrif at the dinner table regarding Scandinavian high-jumpers. During both these scenes, most in the theater laughed out loud, as did I. Likewise, Shyamalan knows how to set a scene to produce suspense. I cringed in anticipation of being startled and scared in two different scenes (the birthday party video, and the knife-reflection under the pantry door). Both these scenes were masterfully done.
I really liked the supporting cast in this movie. Merrill and the Sherrif were both solid characters and well portrayed. And the children were cute and added plenty of comic relief (the precocious child who acts like a 50-year-old trapped in a 4-year-old's body is getting to be such a trite, Hollywood stereotype, but I can't hold that against Shyamalan alone).
So, this movie made me laugh and cringe and grip the sides of my chair in preparation for a fright. And then, it made me groan. And groan. And shake my head in disgust. I don't know if Shyamalan read The Celestine Prophecy before writing this script or what, but the cheesy, someone-is-watching-over-us-all message at the end was ridiculous and simplistic. I don't know if he thought this would be an ending on par with Sixth Sense or if he was actually trying to deliever a message of faith, but either way, he ruined the movie for me. It went from a good, entertaining movie to garbage
nothing more than a two-hour commercial for the Christian Church. If this is indicitive of Shyamalan's works to come, then it's a shame for the movie industry. Until this tripe, he had appeared as a bright spot in an industry increasingly formulaic and mundane.
Windtalkers (2002)
An absolutely horrible movie about a potentially great story.
I was worried when I saw that John Woo was doing the film about Navajo code talkers in WWII. It's a fascinating piece of war history that would make a great movie. But Woo's passion for ridiculously over-the-top action sequences make all his movies sadly humorous, but I tried to keep an open mind about this movie. Perhaps with a different subject matter, the much-acclaimed Woo could show he has real skill behind the camera. But, alas, within the first few minutes of this movie, it showed me just what it was going to be: two hours of pitifully-sappy and horribly-inaccurate stunts and effects.
This movie made Pearl Harbor--a maudlin, predictable, cookie-cutter piece of fluff--look like a masterpiece by comparison. During many of the battle scenes, as well as in a few of the cheesy dialogues, I felt as if I was watching some straight-to-cable sub-B-grade movie. What a horrible disservice to the men who fought and died in WWII.
Just so my comment isn't all negative, I do have to say I thought Christian Slater did a good job with a very formulaic and bland role (which they ALL were). And White Horse, the Navajo paired with Slater's character, was interesting as well. While hoaky, I actually bought their exchanges and found their musical "jam-sessions" almost moving.
Overall, this movie was very poorly done. I'm glad I didn't spend money to see it. For me now, John Woo and Nicholas Cage (just like John Woo and John Travolta) are a combination that can turn even the most interesting subject matter into a joke of a film. I laughed out loud in numerous parts of this movie, none of which were supposed to be funny. A few examples: ridiculously "hollywoodized" battle scenes, like a bazooka shell exploding with the force of a 500-pound bomb; poorly choreographed battle scenes; and lines like "That Navajo saved my bacon!" Really, several times I found myself wondering if someone had written the script as a spoof of action movies and then Woo mistakenly took it as a real script, it was so preposterous in some ways and childishly-predictable and simple in others.
Planet of the Apes (2001)
A film for Primatologists!
Finally, a movie a primate-lover can watch and not groan. I'd read a lot about the making of this movie and was optimistic to see it, because along with LOOKING like apes, the actors reportedly had training to make them ACT like apes. I was not disappointed!
From vocalizations to subtle physical movements to the violent tantrum thrown by Thade (Tim Roth), the actors did a good job of portraying apes, not just being humans in ape suits. Anyone who's studied apes (or watched the Discovery Channel a time or two), would recognize the animals on-screen.
(Spoiler alert in this Paragraph) To me, the most important line in the movie was very early on, uttered by Leo (Mark Wahlberg) to the primatologist on the spaceship Oberon. In speaking about the chimp he's training, Leo says something to the effect of "He's the best money can buy...gene-spliced and chromosome-enhanced". In that line is the key to the whole movie, what made it so much better from a scientific point of view than the original. In the original 1968 picture, the premise was that apes had "evolved" on a post-apocolyptic Earth, learning to speak and walk upright. This, of course, is ridiculous to a scientist and goes completely against evolutionary theory (I'll refrain from a long explanation of that...if anyone's confused, just email me). But in the new version, humans TAMPERED with the genetic makeup of the apes (presumably to make them more human), and THEN the apes were left to evolve after the Oberon landed on the new planet. That is a scientifically plausible event (if we suspend our disbelief and accept gene-splicing, which is not difficult for a futuristic film).
So, this version is far more palatable in respect to plot and the portrayal of apes. I did NOT like the ending of this one as much as the original, and that's what keeps me from giving it a 10 (I give it an 8). I felt like the ending was trite and contrived, but I forgive Burton for doing it. A "trick ending" was obligatory and necessary for Hollywood to remake a "classic" like POTA.
The not-so-subtle social commentary on how we humans treat animals, particularly apes, was fairly glaring, but I think it was well-done. The scene where the little human girl is pried away from her mother to be made a pet is something anyone considering taking a primate as a pet should see. And the line about getting rid of her before she hits puberty because "one thing you don't want in your house is a human teenager" is apt on several levels.
I liked the humor in this film, too. The comic relief of the human trader and the human sayings the apes used were good. And the best bit of humor was achieved through irony in the cameo part played by Charleton Heston. Heston, a known NRA lacky, portrays an elderly Ape who cautions his son to be wary of the humans because they possess the power of dangerous technology; he holds a gun in his hands and declares it the root of human evil. That was masterful!
So, overall this film was a joy to watch. From good jokes and clever irony to a plausible plot and interesting characters and conflict, this movie had it all. I will see it again and again, just to take in all the details of the apes' world. I will, however, not watch the final two minutes, because I think the obligatory Hollywood ending spoils an otherwise great film. It's still better than most movies made today, but Burton's remake would have been better without the ending. As I said before, though, I forgive him for it, and I thank him for making a movie in accord with primatology.
(Spoiler alert)One side note about the movie... one other problem with the believablity was created by a simple fact of biology that some people may not be aware of. At the end of the movie when Leo's chimp lands and exits his spacecraft, it is obvious that he is much smaller than the "evolved" chimps, and that creats a visual inconsistency. That is because that chimp, as with all chimps used in films and TV shows, is a very young ape, probably just four or five years old. An adult chimp is close to the size of a small adult human and would have looked much better. However, adult chimps are not used because they are so large, agressive, and strong. An adult chimp is easily three times as strong as an adult human, has large canine teeth, and could kill a man in a few seconds. So the necessity of using an immature chimp in the role is evident, and we can forgive the movie that small inconsistency as well.
The Thin Red Line (1998)
Poor movie, very disappointing
After seeing Saving Private Ryan and hearing about Red Line coming in half a year, I looked forward to this movie for more than six months. It not only was a disappointment, it was a genuinely bad movie. I'm all for unique movies, non-linear plots, and intellectual pieces, but this movies was pure art-house crap. It was impossible to care about characters that came and went and never materialized again. It was impossible to tell who was "speaking" during the voice-overs, and what they were saying often made little sense. For a while I wondered if maybe some of it was just over my head, but I talked to many people who felt the same way. We agreed it was UNDER our heads. Several people got up and walked out of the movie. I would have, but I kept thinking (okay...he'll wrap it all up in the end). But he didn't. Malick, after all the hype about his brilliance, ended a poor movie with a poorer ending. The only two characters who'd been central at all so that the viewer could connect with and care about them were Webb and (I forget his name now). One of them dies with a silly grin on his face (Jim Caviezal's character) and the other just disappears. Webb gets a dear-john letter and then we never see him again. All the critic acclaim I heard and read for this movie made me swear off critics once and for all. "Malick is BRILLIANT" they drooled. "The way he poetically juxtaposes the horror of war with the beauty of nature is magnificent!" Yeah...whatever. There were some great shots of nature/warfare colliding...but there was no story. It might as well have been a slide show! Truly one of the worst movies I've ever seen.