akumatatsu61 Reviews

The Night of the Hunter (1955)

Excellent

[23 September 2005]

This movie's almost fable or fairytale-like quality is illustrated by its bold, starkly moral plot line and characters. Robert Mitchum delivers an excellent performance as a charismatic and thoroughly evil preacher, in a film rife with symbolism. I couldn't help wincing every time I heard him sing as he hunted the children who held the secret that he sought. Charles Laughton's masterful mise en scène - the arrangement of the scene before the camera - is excellent, adding to the atmosphere, tone and the impact of the fearful, the tragic and the triumphant elements of this work - it is ironic that this film's lack of financial success made it Laughton's only directorial work - since in my opinion, it stands as a masterpiece of storytelling, mise en scène, casting, scriptwriting and score.

Bruce Almighty (2003)

Jim Carrey surpasses himself with mix of laughs and serious (possible spoiler)

[30 May 2003]

Jim Carrey surpasses himself in his role as Bruce Nolan, an often-egotistical newscaster whose life takes a nose-dive, and in his passion over his misfortune, says that "the only one who's not doing his job is you!" to God. God responds by giving Bruce all his powers, and taking a vacation. Nolan finds out just what he is capable of, and just what the responsibilities of being the Almighty are, and finds himself overwhelmed. Excellent performances all around, a very funny and surprisingly deep film.

The Matrix Reloaded (2003)

Violence and lack of direction abounds (spoiler)

[30 May 2003]

I went into this film with high expectations, admittedly. The Matrix was a film that opened a whole new branch of film-making: the technomancer becoming techno-Buddha. The Matrix: Reloaded was extremely poorly paced, and sometimes downright irritating, most notably the oft-hyped full-body sex scene between Neo and Trinity, which frankly made me sick to see, since there was little or no apparent emotional chemistry beforehand. On the other hand, I found the Agent Smith character intriguing as a villain, his experience with Neo in the first episode appears to have drastically changed him, making him 1. independent and 2. self-replicative. The irony of Smith's existence hits home with a scene where he sends Neo his now-useless earpiece. He confronts Neo in a really needlessly-long fight scene, involving Agent Smiths by the dozen. Aside from the seemingly endless stream of fight scenes that followed, the plot finally taking a real direction with a confrontation between Neo and the System Architect (I swear, I was thinking Tron and the MCP all over again), which led to a totally new direction for the series, especially for Morpheus and Neo. All in all, I found this movie just another high-tech action flick, and if I want to see a real one, I'll watch Blade Runner.

Austin Powers in Goldmember (2002)

Crap.

[11 January 2003]

This film offered contrived cheap laugh after contrived cheap laugh. This often ridiculously badly written movie had me literally fast-forwarding what felt like about every ten or fifteen minutes, just to escape the stream of bad dialogue and really embarrassing songs. I will admit that there are a few funny scenes, especially involving "Mini-Me", but they really couldn't slow this movie's descent into terminal velocity right into the recycle bin.

Needful Things (1993)

Not too bad, very good acting.

[11 January 2003]

I must admit, I had been wanting to see this film, ever since I learned that my personal favorite of King's stories had been made into a movie - though this fact in itself was enough to make me much more ambivalent about seeing it. The acting in it was very good, even though I was a little iffy about Ed Harris playing the somewhat whimsical Sherriff Pangborn. Most of the original dialogue was kept pretty well intact, from the original story. The two real downsides to this are the fact that a LOT of the cast of the story doesn't appear in the movie. Second, the plot is made much less "mystical" to coin a phrase. If one has not read the books, however, the movie is surprising and quite creepy, and yes, of course, sometimes pretty gross.

All in all, a good scary film to watch and curl up with someone on a dark stormy night.

Contact (1997)

Read the book.

[29 November 2002]

This poorly scripted and often contrived adaptation of Carl Sagan's masterpiece about a *group* of explorers *sharing* an incredible experience is something that really should be bypassed in favor of the original novel. Everything from the old Hollywood stereotyped female lead who can only be related to a male lead sexually (an old and unnecessary contrivance) to the writers of the movie almost literally putting words in Dr. Arroway's (Jodie Foster) mouth, to coin a phrase. By the same token, it was visually quite interesting, the acting is very good and the casting was well-thought and also very good. If they stuck to Carl's original story, the cheap lines and cut corners one witnesses here would be *WHOLLY* unnecessary.

Shrek (2001)

Excellent!

[5 November 2002]

This film set out to make fun of just about every sappy ultra-Disneyfied children's movie that has ever been made, and it blows them out of the park! From the main character being deliberately different from the usual sword-wielding dunderhead to the villain being a very short noble with both an inferiority complex and a colossal ego, this film is its most appealing, simply because the hero and heroine are such unlikely people! I won't give anything more than this away, by all means - watch the film! :-)

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)

Incredible!

[19 December 2001]

To say that this is visually stunning and more gripping than a roomful of new lock-wrenches would be like saying that Shakespeare wrote a little, in other words, a gross understatement.

The scenes are amazing, the acting magnificent, and the visual effects peerless.

The monsters... have to be seen to be believed.

A heart-felt 11 from me. :-)