Change Your Image
pennysworth
Reviews
Hardwired (2009)
Greedy corporation implants chip in unsuspecting poor.
The premise of this film--almost certainly a failed pilot*--is very, very clever. Greedy industrialists devise the ultimate marketing device--no fast-forwarding, no trips to the kitchen--in our brains. It was the perfect place for a clever satire on the insanity of Madison Avenue. Unfortunately it promptly degenerates into a threadbare revenge saga with all the standard plot devices of such genres.
A pity because it had the promise of something much, much better.
Brad Kilmer looks deranged. What's with his hair? Has anyone made more bad films than Cuba Gooding? *No movie movie introduces a well-known character actor mug--Lance Henriksen--at the end of a movie unless it's the pilot of a TV series.
Shadow Conspiracy (1997)
Ghastly and stupid.
I just saw this on a local independent station in the New York City area. The cast showed promise but when I saw the director, George Cosmotos, I became suspicious. And sure enough, it was every bit as bad, every bit as pointless and stupid as every George Cosmotos movie I ever saw. He's like a stupid man's Michael Bey--with all the awfulness that accolade promises.
There's no point to the conspiracy, no burning issues that urge the conspirators on. We are left to ourselves to connect the dots from one bit of graffiti on various walls in the film to the next. Thus, the current budget crisis, the war in Iraq, Islamic extremism, the fate of social security, 47 million Americans without health care, stagnating wages, and the death of the middle class are all subsumed by the sheer terror of graffiti.
A truly, stunningly idiotic film.