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TheoTraverz
Reviews
Jeepers Creepers (2001)
Great set-up with a very unsatisfying payoff
Jeepers begins with the promising signposts of a chilling teen slasher flick- two college siblings, a vacant rural, road, and a maniac who tries to run them off of it. And even when the logic that the drives the two protagonists slowly unravels, there's room to suspend one's disbelief and join them on their journey into the unknown.
Then, very abruptly, a supernatural element is introduced as if to make the film more intriguing. Instead it only refutes all the elements introduced in the first suspenseful half-hour. The villain appears to transform suddenly from the possibly-deranged-backroads-serial killer to the other-wordly-winged-cannibalist. Horror enthusiasts will particularly cringe when the spooky Hattie McDanielesque psychic appears from nowhere and wants to risk her life to save these two college brats from the evil flying demon. What could be a mindless but disturbingly entertaining shock flick quickly becomes an exercise in connect the horror movie cliches.
By the end, the only thing scary about "Jeepers Creepers" is the fact that people actually spent time and money to make this movie.
Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001)
Mind numbing, emotionally shallow, two-hour fluff... but what else did you expect?
Tomb Raider has no pretensions about what it is. From a director whose background is television commercials, Simon West delivers yet another slick, colorful, flashy feature with little substance and, subsequently, much more spectacle than story. Much like the video game it's based off of. Even if you see the movie for the same reasons I did-- non-stop action with Angelina Jolie-- rest assured, after a while you'll begin to get the feeling you're watching over the shoulder of someone else playing a video game the rather than having the controller in your own hand. Detached, uninvolved, and, well, bored.
3D (2000)
A con artist entices a group of young friends one afternoon in Doreen's Delicious Diner
Although the message of 3D comes off heavy-handed at times, there's a clear narrative with an emotional integrity that not many short films manage to pull off. Both funny and touching. I've seen this three times with different audiences and each time people seem to come away with a genuine admiration and respect for the vision of director, Pete Chatmon. I'm looking forward to seeing his next film!