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philb-15
Reviews
Se7en (1995)
Pretty good, lets say se7en out of ten
Although this is a good and very watchable movie, it does have some major flaws. There are three obvious ones: firstly, the ending, which is just so predictable. Kevin Spacey as the serial killer announces that there are still two victims to be accounted for and it comes as no surprise when it is revealed who those two people are. Secondly, Gwyneth Paltrow. I've never really rated her in any movie that I've seen and here she gives another bland performance. Thirdly, the scenes midway through the movie where Pitt, Paltrow and Freeman are getting to know each other over dinner, really drag.
OK, criticisms out of the way. The real plus points of this film are the performances of Spacey/Freeman and also the dark menacing atmosphere that is created throughout the course of the movie. Spacey is one of the best Hollywood actors around, almost in the Tom Hanks class, and here he gives a very restrained but menacing performance as the bad guy. Morgan Freeman always gives the same type of laid-back, calm, controlled performance and here it is used to great effect. This probably ranks alongside The Shawshank Redemption as his finest appearance on celluloid. Brad Pitt and (especially) Gwyneth Paltrow look a litle bit out of their depth among these two fine actors and they don't really convince.
The plot is essentially just another serial-killer-picking-ingenious-ways-to-kill-people situation, however it is refreshingly free of pointless CGI effects and has little in the way of gore, which is nice because the movie has to get by on atmosphere and dialogue, something for which Hollywood has not always tried in major films. Among the killings are a man who is forced to eat until he (almost literally) bursts and one or two others, many of which also reveal clues deliberately left by Kevin Spacey. It's an intelligent film which really would have been a 9/10 film had the major flaws which I mentioned been addressed.
Austin Powers in Goldmember (2002)
Groovy baby? Not really............
A series that began so well with the genuinely funny and inventive first film has now slipped into mediocrity with this third instalment, and it's probably time that Mike Myers tried something else because he does have a lot of talent, although its wasted in this movie.
What little plot there is seems to revolve around the valuable genitals of Mr Goldmember (hence his name - [snigger]). Everything else in this dire movie is just a series of pointless cameo's by the likes of Kevin Spacey, Danny De Vito and even the Bleeping Osbournes. Why these scenes have been added is anyone's guess. Presumably the plot is just so thin that the makers decided to show just how famous the Austin Powers franchise is by shamelessly wheeling these people in, perhaps to pad the movie out a little bit as well.
Michael Caine joins in, hamming it up in great style playing Austin's father and there's a very predictable revelation at the end regarding Dr Evil. Beyonce Knowles tries her best but she's only really as expressive as Heather Graham was in the second film, i.e not very good.
The overall feeling is that all the actors are just going through the motions in the knowledge that this is a bit of a turkey, albeit a very well paid one. Some of the sexual innuendo, both visual and verbal, is just plain embarassing and the whole exercise has the feeling of being a money-making exercise, with very little thought given to plot or character building. 2.5/10
Die Another Day (2002)
Come back Sean Connery, all is forgiven.
The steady decline of Brosnan's Bond continues with Die Another Day, the fourth 007 movie in which he has played the World's most famous secret agent. Brosnan is now starting to show his age and perhaps it might be time for a younger actor (Hugh Jackman perhaps) to take over the reins and it really is also time that new scriptwriters were employed.
Watching this movie is like watching a Carry-On film, or Porkys. The schoolboy smut is embarassing. Near the end of the movie Halle Berry and Brosnan are trying to pilot an out-of-control aeroplane and Berry shouts "looks like we're going down together". When Brosnan and Berry meet for the first time in the movie, Bond gives a false name to which Berry replies "that's a bit of a mouthful". And there are other numerous examples of where this series has degraded so much down the years - lazy scripting. Connery would have made a sexual innuendo but it would have been uttered with class and would have just been dismissed as we went into the next scene. With Brosnan's Bond, it seems that every set piece is just being shown as a lead-up to yet another god awful pun. In fact I'm surprised that Berry didn't resort to saying "Hello I've got pussy galore"....................
The stunts and special effects are adequate but to be truthful Bond movies nowadays are just an excuse to fill the screen with more and more bangs, flashes, explosions, and rounded off by a ridiculous schoolboy-style smutty joke. Perhaps the series needs a return to some genuine spying, sensible plotting, in the style of "For Your Eyes Only". Or, maybe the next film (hopefully Brosnans last) will again have Bond stripped of all humanity so that the movie becomes a tough, no-holds-barred violent one in the style of the very underrated "Licence to Kill".
Definitely NOT one of the best Bonds, it's not even one of Brosnan's best. 3/10
BlackMale (2000)
A clever idea ruined by poor acting and plotting
There are some spoilers here.
The first 45 minutes or so of this movie show much promise. Two plastic, wannabe bad boys owe $12,000 to a mysterious black dude and invent a clever scam in order to raise the cash. They decide to set up a Doctor (yes, the English guy from Cheers) with a woman and film them having sex. They then blackmail the English guy from Cheers and warn him that they'll show the video to his wife unless he hands over a very large sum of money (at least $12,000 for starters).
Things appear to be going reasonably well for the two bad-guys as they hold the English guy from Cheers hostage at his house and attempt to withdraw the money from his bank account. But then, in a very well-staged scene, the English guy from Cheers is revealed in a totally different light. This twist in itself is very clever and is revealed in a very casual manner which takes one by surprise. But from this promising plot development the movie then subsides into unintentional hilarity. Everybody ends up trying to double-cross everyone else, and, most ridiculously of all, the mysterious black dude that I mentioned, to whom the $12,000 was originally owed, is revealed as a Snoop-Doggy lookalike with a zimmer frame (I kid you not).
There is a final shoot-out which is handled very badly by the directors and the impression one gets is that the scriptwriter had a very good idea, with a clever twist, but just didn't have a clue about how to expand this to a more sensible conclusion. 4/10
Independence Day (1996)
[rolls eyes upwards and mutters] "God bless America"
(This review contains one or two spoilers, but I'm sure you've all seen the movie anyway.)
With a massive budget, massive special effects and massive spaceships, Independence Day is a massive turkey. This movie is pretty much two hours of jingoistic flag waving, patriotic fervour and really really really annoying scenes of stupid people saluting one another.
The stereotyped characters do little to save this either. Judd Hirsch is little more than embarassing as a typical elderly Jewish world-weary type of guy, and Bill Pullman must be the most expressionless President since George Bush Jnr. The very talented Will Smith tries his best but when the script has him punching an alien in the desert and then muttering some banal dialogue you just know that this is an extremely BAD movie.
From a logical point of view, it defies belief. Here we have Jeff Goldblum (who plays Hirsch's son) managing to figure out the alien's plan for world domination all by himself because he plays chess quite a lot. Also, the Empire State Building is demolished by the aliens and the resulting out-of-control fire is stopped by one female character simply closing a door. Area 51 is shown, and conveniently has a recovered alien space ship which crashed years earlier, and of course Goldblum and Smith figure out how to pilot it without reading any alien manuals. The list goes on.
But the real problem with this movie, as I've mentioned, is the ridiculous level of patriotism shown. It's almost as if the Americans are trying to remind all of us that they are the great super-power, and they'll always be there to save us should 15-mile wide spaceships happen to appear in the skies. As with "Armaggedon" there are endless shots of the American flag, predictably nauseating scenes of wholesome Americans huddled around radios and of course that old American stand-by, the endless rounds of people saluting each other.
Judging by some of the other comments on here, even Americans are slightly weary of this movie, which really says it all.
Alien³ (1992)
The conclusion of a great trilogy (we don't talk about Alien Resurrection in our house)
Vastly underrated, even in its theatrical form, Alien 3 is probably the least of the original three movies but still well worth a viewing. One of the problems with the project was the choice of Director (or DirectorS as there were several that passed through the revolving door before the movie was released.
I haven't yet seen the alternative DVD version but it's on my to-do list. From what I can tell it expands on some of the characterisations and is apparently the preferred version among Alien buffs. I have also heard of a 4-hour completely uncut version that would make fascinating viewing.
This theatrical release though deserves more credit than it generally gets. It dares to dampen audience expectations by killing off two of the main characters from Aliens more or less during the opening credits, even showing an autopsy being performed on one of them. Ripley is reduced to a shaven, dirty, initially frightened and unwelcome addition to the steel-works cum prison where she crashes, although once it becomes clear that there's another alien running around then Sigourney Weaver changes her character and Ripley assumes unofficial command as the prisoners attempt to survive.
Americans proably don't like this movie as much as the first two, mainly due to the casting of mostly British actors who therefore would be unrecognisable to our friends across the pond. Among the exceptions is Charles Dance who gives a very good, restrained performance as the prison doctor, although he is also an inmate. He and Ripley become intimate in an understandable kind of way and Dance's exit from the movie again slightly unsettles audiences expectations. He is, after all, a heart-throb (so I'm told) so this movie definitely doesn't follow the script where "popular" characters save the day.
Charles Dutton gives a good performance as the kind-of head preacher and he is initially reluctant to get involved with Ripley because he fears that her presence will interfere with the normal everyday running of the prison. However Brian Glover as the Prison governor is less convincing in his role.
A good film, nonetheless. 7/10