The four stars are for the cast, the sets, the realistic equipment, uniforms, weapons and vehicles. What doesn't deserve any stars is the terribly bad story line, the piles of clichés and the totally unrealistic battle scenes. The final battle is so unrealistic it makes you want to laugh when you should be gripping your seat. The young gunner in the front seat with his single forward pointing machine gun having hundreds of German running back and forth like chickens in front of his sights for the entire battle is ludicrous... In the real world a crew in this situation (Trapped in an immobilized tank surrounded on all sides by 200 veteran SS soldiers with dozens of anti tank weapons!) would have been killed within 10 seconds. The dialogs are long-winded, absurd and destroy the momentum of the movie. The script seems copied on SPR without the realism and the intensity. This had the subject, budget, actors, sets and equipment to be a great war movie. How sad...
Reviews
8 Reviews
Straw Dogs
(2011)
If you're going to remake a nearly perfect movie, don't botch it!
19 September 2011
This remake has no reason to exist. It is shallow and poorly acted and lacks most of the tense emotions and moral questions raised by the original. Hollywood at its worst, cellophane-wrapped, uninspired, made-for-TV quality, cookie cutter remake. Of course, it is padded with clichés, cheap effects and mass-appeal frosting to bring out brain-dead teen movie goers. Why did a great actor like James Wood let himself get suckered into this disaster? This could have been an so-so B-action movie but trying to cash in on the status of Sam Peckinpah's cult classic is a really cheap move. It also forces me to give it a 1-star rating rather than a 4 to 5 rating it could have earned if it didn't ask to be compared with the former.
If you consider watching this movie, please rent the original instead. It is still as intense as it was in 1971 and actually raises a lot of disturbing questions. A true classic.
If you consider watching this movie, please rent the original instead. It is still as intense as it was in 1971 and actually raises a lot of disturbing questions. A true classic.
Saving Private Ryan
(1998)
Best war movie ever made... period.
19 February 2011
Warning: Spoilers
Fantastic cinematography, great acting, beyond realistic, unbelievable attention to detail, gripping action scenes, compelling story... I truly "lived" this movie from beginning to end. My heart pounded and I almost threw up with the young men in the LCA heading for Omaha Beach so intense was my connection with the action on the screen... intense, almost too intense.
It awoke feelings in me that forced me to question my own sense of right and wrong... question how I would act in similar situations, question the right and wrong of a war that I always had viewed as just, the justification of the unconscionable, the motives, the hatred of the enemy.
Whether you like or don't like war movies, this is one of the best movies ever made. It's neither an anti-war or a pro-war movie. It's just a movie made without compromise. Tom Hanks is incredible. His best role in my opinion.
This one is on my top ten list of best movies ever.
It awoke feelings in me that forced me to question my own sense of right and wrong... question how I would act in similar situations, question the right and wrong of a war that I always had viewed as just, the justification of the unconscionable, the motives, the hatred of the enemy.
Whether you like or don't like war movies, this is one of the best movies ever made. It's neither an anti-war or a pro-war movie. It's just a movie made without compromise. Tom Hanks is incredible. His best role in my opinion.
This one is on my top ten list of best movies ever.
I Am Legend
(2007)
A missed opportunity...
27 January 2011
I have not read the book but I saw the movie "Omega Man" based on the same book.
I thought the first movie had great potential, but missed the mark in several key areas. I was hoping this remake would take it to the next level. This one makes a total mess of the story resulting in a totally inept action movie with no soul.
The whole feel of being alone in the world, hunter and hunted, the fear of the lurking enemy is missing. Instead we have a car chase through Manhattan, an immature kid/brilliant scientist/terrible strategist main character, totally unnecessary flashbacks to explain the obvious, CGI monsters with super-human physical abilities instead of semi-human mutants, incomprehensible stupidity on the part of the hero, alternating thinking and animal behavior from the "monsters", undeveloped secondary characters and lots of action scenes to cover a lack of "soul".
There were a few promising moments: Will Smith's relationship with his dog and the pain of losing the dog after it saves him... The fearful nights, the hiding and the need to cover up smells and any signs that might lead "them" to him, the tense scene in the dark building when he discovers the hive.
What is missing? Connection with the character. Time showing the "routine" of his life, his "relationship" with his opponents, insight into his quest and why he is a "Legend", his loneliness.
What is botched? The CGI monsters leaping tall building, tearing the roofs off houses, breaking through walls with their heads, acting like wild animals but planning clever traps? Raising attack dogs? Setting up mannequins? Too many action sequences, too many explosions, too many car chases, too much gun play, too much brawn, not enough brains. Secondary characters are wasted, final wrap up feels like a quick exit left and lacks any feeling.
I thought the first movie had great potential, but missed the mark in several key areas. I was hoping this remake would take it to the next level. This one makes a total mess of the story resulting in a totally inept action movie with no soul.
The whole feel of being alone in the world, hunter and hunted, the fear of the lurking enemy is missing. Instead we have a car chase through Manhattan, an immature kid/brilliant scientist/terrible strategist main character, totally unnecessary flashbacks to explain the obvious, CGI monsters with super-human physical abilities instead of semi-human mutants, incomprehensible stupidity on the part of the hero, alternating thinking and animal behavior from the "monsters", undeveloped secondary characters and lots of action scenes to cover a lack of "soul".
There were a few promising moments: Will Smith's relationship with his dog and the pain of losing the dog after it saves him... The fearful nights, the hiding and the need to cover up smells and any signs that might lead "them" to him, the tense scene in the dark building when he discovers the hive.
What is missing? Connection with the character. Time showing the "routine" of his life, his "relationship" with his opponents, insight into his quest and why he is a "Legend", his loneliness.
What is botched? The CGI monsters leaping tall building, tearing the roofs off houses, breaking through walls with their heads, acting like wild animals but planning clever traps? Raising attack dogs? Setting up mannequins? Too many action sequences, too many explosions, too many car chases, too much gun play, too much brawn, not enough brains. Secondary characters are wasted, final wrap up feels like a quick exit left and lacks any feeling.
True Grit
(2010)
A slow moving realistic western with excellent performances...
20 January 2011
Warning: Spoilers
This movie has great potential for being judged, not based on its own merits, but on whether you are in the pro- or anti-Coen club, part of the John Wayne fan club, worshiper of the original movie etc.
I have seen the "original" and thought it was a good movie but not a great one. John Wayne's acting never seemed more than adequate to me... He never expanded his repertoire beyond being himself so his Rooster Cogburn is just "John Wayne" as are Chisum, MacLintock, Brannigan, Cahill, McCandles and numerous other characters he played. Jeff Bridges is a far better actor with the ability to portray a wider spectrum of characters but he does not have the icon status and quasi-religious following that John Wayne has, and which invariably affects the opinion many will have of the movie.
Thus I feel it best not to compare the two movie adaptations of the book to avoid the irrational emotions associated with what might appear to some as a blasphemous attack on the "Holy Grail" of John Wayne movies.
The movie is a "dark" western, with excellent acting, very realistic settings, a depressing "period" look, brilliant dialogs, a slow pace and a compelling story. The Coen brothers have not put as much of their usual quirky twists in this movie as I expected. I see it more as their take on the Western genre just as Miller's crossing was their foray into the 1930s gangster movie genre, an exercise in style and movie making perfection without any other purpose than to see if they could make a great western... I think they did. I rank it with Unforgiven, McCabe & Mrs Miller and Once upon a time in the West as one of my favorite westerns of all times.
I have seen the "original" and thought it was a good movie but not a great one. John Wayne's acting never seemed more than adequate to me... He never expanded his repertoire beyond being himself so his Rooster Cogburn is just "John Wayne" as are Chisum, MacLintock, Brannigan, Cahill, McCandles and numerous other characters he played. Jeff Bridges is a far better actor with the ability to portray a wider spectrum of characters but he does not have the icon status and quasi-religious following that John Wayne has, and which invariably affects the opinion many will have of the movie.
Thus I feel it best not to compare the two movie adaptations of the book to avoid the irrational emotions associated with what might appear to some as a blasphemous attack on the "Holy Grail" of John Wayne movies.
The movie is a "dark" western, with excellent acting, very realistic settings, a depressing "period" look, brilliant dialogs, a slow pace and a compelling story. The Coen brothers have not put as much of their usual quirky twists in this movie as I expected. I see it more as their take on the Western genre just as Miller's crossing was their foray into the 1930s gangster movie genre, an exercise in style and movie making perfection without any other purpose than to see if they could make a great western... I think they did. I rank it with Unforgiven, McCabe & Mrs Miller and Once upon a time in the West as one of my favorite westerns of all times.
The Prestige
(2006)
Great packaging... but nothing good inside
7 January 2011
Warning: Spoilers
I am getting a bit annoyed with the IMDb ratings because they regularly trick me into watching bad movies which have inexplicably high scores.
This movie is actually well packaged, technically competent, with good acting (except for the always wooden Jackman) and quite decent from a story-telling point of view. I was able to connect with the story and the characters despite their flaws and I was entertained for the first hour and a half.
The process of getting behind the scenes and trying to understand/figure out all the subterfuges and tricks that these rival magicians use both in their acts and against each other was quite captivating and carried the movie well, the ultimate goal being to try to figure out "the transported man".
Several of the twists caught me by surprise and I was waiting for a spectacular finale but then Nolan manages to drop the plot on the dung pile by unveiling... the Cloning Machine!
The whole story becomes meaningless science fiction drivel. Why bring in a cloning machine when he could have borrowed a Transporter from the Star Trek set filming next door and wouldn't have needed to kill all those clones? And think of how all the other magic acts in the movie could have been enhanced with a Gravity Inverter, a Matter Replicator, Invisibility Cloak...
Once the story credibility falls apart the nice packaging becomes an empty shell and it can't save the movie from demise. Too bad, it seemed to have great potential...
Is Nolan becoming the next M Night Shyamalan?
This movie is actually well packaged, technically competent, with good acting (except for the always wooden Jackman) and quite decent from a story-telling point of view. I was able to connect with the story and the characters despite their flaws and I was entertained for the first hour and a half.
The process of getting behind the scenes and trying to understand/figure out all the subterfuges and tricks that these rival magicians use both in their acts and against each other was quite captivating and carried the movie well, the ultimate goal being to try to figure out "the transported man".
Several of the twists caught me by surprise and I was waiting for a spectacular finale but then Nolan manages to drop the plot on the dung pile by unveiling... the Cloning Machine!
The whole story becomes meaningless science fiction drivel. Why bring in a cloning machine when he could have borrowed a Transporter from the Star Trek set filming next door and wouldn't have needed to kill all those clones? And think of how all the other magic acts in the movie could have been enhanced with a Gravity Inverter, a Matter Replicator, Invisibility Cloak...
Once the story credibility falls apart the nice packaging becomes an empty shell and it can't save the movie from demise. Too bad, it seemed to have great potential...
Is Nolan becoming the next M Night Shyamalan?
3:10 to Yuma
(2007)
Completely unbelievable storyline ruins it for me
6 January 2011
Warning: Spoilers
I love great authentic-feeling westerns but this is not one of them.
Too many plot holes, an idiotic main character who can't decide if he is good or bad, tons of totally unbelievable action scenes, lack of tension or suspense and a missing true purpose or thread - this sums it up.
The final scene where Wade kills all his dumbfounded and devoted followers, who have spent the entire movie trying to free him, should win an award for the most anti-climactic and illogical ending in any movie.
The Gatling-gun opening scene already set the tone for realism in this soap opera: despite a solid wall of pursuing bandits on horseback, not a single horse is hit by the hail of bullets fired from the stagecoach. The dynamite in the air shooting scene later in the movie is just as realistic.
The tension is non-existent and the characters are not believable, so it failed to draw me in and that is a fatal flaw in a movie. No magic left, just an empty display of video action running before my eyes.
While the actors performed quite well and the technical aspects of the filming were good, a bad script just makes the rest pointless. My score of 3 stars reflects the fact that the movie failed to tell a compelling story.
Tombstone, Open Range and Unforgiven are recent westerns that I rate 8-10 stars for comparison.
Too many plot holes, an idiotic main character who can't decide if he is good or bad, tons of totally unbelievable action scenes, lack of tension or suspense and a missing true purpose or thread - this sums it up.
The final scene where Wade kills all his dumbfounded and devoted followers, who have spent the entire movie trying to free him, should win an award for the most anti-climactic and illogical ending in any movie.
The Gatling-gun opening scene already set the tone for realism in this soap opera: despite a solid wall of pursuing bandits on horseback, not a single horse is hit by the hail of bullets fired from the stagecoach. The dynamite in the air shooting scene later in the movie is just as realistic.
The tension is non-existent and the characters are not believable, so it failed to draw me in and that is a fatal flaw in a movie. No magic left, just an empty display of video action running before my eyes.
While the actors performed quite well and the technical aspects of the filming were good, a bad script just makes the rest pointless. My score of 3 stars reflects the fact that the movie failed to tell a compelling story.
Tombstone, Open Range and Unforgiven are recent westerns that I rate 8-10 stars for comparison.
Inception
(2010)
Boring, inconsistent and pointless
5 January 2011
Warning: Spoilers
I was really looking forward to watching this movie after all the positive reviews, the incredibly high IMDb rating and the raving of several friends who had seen it.
I will point out that I liked The Matrix, Memento, Batman Begins and the Dark Knight (although this last movie is quite overrated on IMDb). I also understood the plot of Inception from the start and never had any trouble following what was happening so it's not that I didn't "get it".
Inception is NOT a great movie and not even a very good one. The plot is not very clever or inventive contrary to what many IMDb raters have suggested and there are no interesting or surprising twists.
The characters are poorly developed and, as the viewer, I didn't really care what happened to them. There are no true "bad guys" to root against (all the bad guys are just "bad" dreams) and there is no real desire to see the "good guys" succeed because the object of the entire plot seems irrelevant (implant a thought in some guy's head so he will break up his father's corporation... I kid you not!).
The fact that everything happens in dreams removes the sense of danger and risk from all the action and makes it seem like a pointless video game, which is what several of the dreams appear to be anyway... unimaginative and repetitive. Are all Nolan's dreams just "shoot'em up" video games? The attack of the hospital/mountain fortress was as bad as it gets... looked like a CGI sequence from Medal of Honor/Call of Duty.
It was also infuriating to me that the rules of the dream universes are inconsistent. Creating an imaginary situation where normal rules don't apply is OK as long as the alternate universe functions according to logical rules, but in this movie the rules are constantly bent to accommodate the needs of the director.
A few examples:
The top is supposed to be an indication to Mal that she is in "her own dream" if the top spins forever because she has made it that way... If she is in someone else's dream then the top will topple since they don't know that in her dreams the top spins forever. So how does that indicate to Dom/the viewer that he is/is not in a dream/reality in the end scene?... but wow, that is sooo deep.
How did finding the top in the safe allow Dom to "incept" Mal with the idea that she was in a dream and needed to return to reality? No explanation... but wow, that is sooo deep.
In dream No.1 the van falls off the bridge causing weightlessness in dream No.2 - meaning that non-physical events (it's a dream) of a certain kind(?) carry through between dream layers. In dream No.2 the sleeping characters become weightless but somehow this state does not carry through to layer No.3 and No.4... but it's a dream anyway so who cares if it makes sense?
Why do you need a "kick" in each layer to wake up the characters? if weightlessness carries through the layers the "kick" would logically also carry through... If there was some logic to the rule wouldn't it be that only actual physical events in the real world carry through to the dreams? But in your dream you are aware that there is another reality - which is really another dream - so you dream that can feel the effects of the other dream although you are asleep and unaware of what's going on... but wow, that is sooo deep.
If a character is asleep in the first layer of a dream he does not know what is happening to him after he has fallen asleep thus would have no reason to dream that he is becoming weightless in layer two as he sleeps through the falling van dream... but wow, that is sooo deep.
Since the wake-up "kicks" are supposed to come through sensation in the inner ear and the "kicks" are not real but dreams, then I have to conclude that the inner ear must "dream" that it senses the imaginary kicks, which makes no sense at all... but wow, that is sooo deep.
So as you analyze the logic behind the dream rules you must conclude that the entire movie is just a dream (a nightmare) where no logic applies or that the "dream rules" are just nonsense and the whole movie is a pretext for stringing together a bunch of unrelated "cool" action sequences and special effects to make a massive Hollywood "pseudo-intellectual" blockbuster junk movie.
This movie was an even the greater disappointment considering that I was anticipating something better than "The Matrix" or "The Sixth Sense". The IMDb rating of 9+ is incomprehensible, this should rate in the 6.0-7.0 range. The rating must reflect a large number of users getting confused and rating it as a video game.
As for those who say the number of positive votes/reviews indicate it is a great movie I think you could likewise argue for McDonald's being the best food in the world.
I rated it a very harsh 1.0 only to help bring the IMDb rating back to earth. It is however a very mediocre movie.
I will point out that I liked The Matrix, Memento, Batman Begins and the Dark Knight (although this last movie is quite overrated on IMDb). I also understood the plot of Inception from the start and never had any trouble following what was happening so it's not that I didn't "get it".
Inception is NOT a great movie and not even a very good one. The plot is not very clever or inventive contrary to what many IMDb raters have suggested and there are no interesting or surprising twists.
The characters are poorly developed and, as the viewer, I didn't really care what happened to them. There are no true "bad guys" to root against (all the bad guys are just "bad" dreams) and there is no real desire to see the "good guys" succeed because the object of the entire plot seems irrelevant (implant a thought in some guy's head so he will break up his father's corporation... I kid you not!).
The fact that everything happens in dreams removes the sense of danger and risk from all the action and makes it seem like a pointless video game, which is what several of the dreams appear to be anyway... unimaginative and repetitive. Are all Nolan's dreams just "shoot'em up" video games? The attack of the hospital/mountain fortress was as bad as it gets... looked like a CGI sequence from Medal of Honor/Call of Duty.
It was also infuriating to me that the rules of the dream universes are inconsistent. Creating an imaginary situation where normal rules don't apply is OK as long as the alternate universe functions according to logical rules, but in this movie the rules are constantly bent to accommodate the needs of the director.
A few examples:
The top is supposed to be an indication to Mal that she is in "her own dream" if the top spins forever because she has made it that way... If she is in someone else's dream then the top will topple since they don't know that in her dreams the top spins forever. So how does that indicate to Dom/the viewer that he is/is not in a dream/reality in the end scene?... but wow, that is sooo deep.
How did finding the top in the safe allow Dom to "incept" Mal with the idea that she was in a dream and needed to return to reality? No explanation... but wow, that is sooo deep.
In dream No.1 the van falls off the bridge causing weightlessness in dream No.2 - meaning that non-physical events (it's a dream) of a certain kind(?) carry through between dream layers. In dream No.2 the sleeping characters become weightless but somehow this state does not carry through to layer No.3 and No.4... but it's a dream anyway so who cares if it makes sense?
Why do you need a "kick" in each layer to wake up the characters? if weightlessness carries through the layers the "kick" would logically also carry through... If there was some logic to the rule wouldn't it be that only actual physical events in the real world carry through to the dreams? But in your dream you are aware that there is another reality - which is really another dream - so you dream that can feel the effects of the other dream although you are asleep and unaware of what's going on... but wow, that is sooo deep.
If a character is asleep in the first layer of a dream he does not know what is happening to him after he has fallen asleep thus would have no reason to dream that he is becoming weightless in layer two as he sleeps through the falling van dream... but wow, that is sooo deep.
Since the wake-up "kicks" are supposed to come through sensation in the inner ear and the "kicks" are not real but dreams, then I have to conclude that the inner ear must "dream" that it senses the imaginary kicks, which makes no sense at all... but wow, that is sooo deep.
So as you analyze the logic behind the dream rules you must conclude that the entire movie is just a dream (a nightmare) where no logic applies or that the "dream rules" are just nonsense and the whole movie is a pretext for stringing together a bunch of unrelated "cool" action sequences and special effects to make a massive Hollywood "pseudo-intellectual" blockbuster junk movie.
This movie was an even the greater disappointment considering that I was anticipating something better than "The Matrix" or "The Sixth Sense". The IMDb rating of 9+ is incomprehensible, this should rate in the 6.0-7.0 range. The rating must reflect a large number of users getting confused and rating it as a video game.
As for those who say the number of positive votes/reviews indicate it is a great movie I think you could likewise argue for McDonald's being the best food in the world.
I rated it a very harsh 1.0 only to help bring the IMDb rating back to earth. It is however a very mediocre movie.
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