thailand Reviews

28 Days Later (2002)

A prententious, annoying and contrived ZOMBIE FILM!

[3/10 · 30 June 2003]

I desperately wanted to leave this movie, but had gone to the theater with someone else in their car. Oops.

The director's view of this film is very annoying. It's like "lets have fun with the camera and see how many weird places we can film from, how much we can dolly the camera in every shot, tilt the camera to weird angles, and generally be pretentiously artsy and obtuse."

The horror aspect is amateurish. The last thing I expected was a zombie film, which is basically what this movie is all about. Silly zombies who are *inexplicably* not dead like nearly all the rest of British humanity, and how possess superhuman speed and agility, hiss a lot, and cough up volumes of blood. Ooohhh ... don't get hit by any blood or you'll be a zombie in ... 15 to 20 seconds ... Ooooohhhh ....

This movie just didn't know what it wanted to be when it grew up. I expected something along the lines of 12 Monkeys, and got a bizarre zombie flick instead.

I hold Roger Ebert and James Berardinelli responsible for tricking me with their 3/4 reviews. I should send each of them a bill for half of my $7.50. On their scale I'd give it a 1.5/4, or maybe a 2/4 if I was in a good mood. On my traditional 10 scale, a la IMDb, I give it a 4. Save your money, and your time. See something else.

Brother (I) (2000)

Inscrutably inane synthetically styled deathorama

[1/10 · 11 November 2002]

Sony Pictures Classics should be ashamed of themselves.

I nearly fell out of my chair laughing when in the second-last scene a character's line include "inscrutable". That's the term I had been thinking of since about 10 minutes into this 2 hour piece of cinecaca.

This movie's stylish light-jazz soundtrack, hip art direction and highly aesthetic look are enough to make you want to like it.

Unfortunately, that's impossible. This movie is garbage. The performers can't act. The dialogue is beneath juvenile. The script shows not even a remote trace of intelligence. The characters are plastic and one dimensional. There isn't a hint of continuity. The script is ludicrous and plot development is non-existent, without a hint of credibility in any part of the story.

"Brother" is an insult to the "Yakuza flic" genre.

This "movie" is optimized aesthetic moronity, mindless 2-second murders by the dozen, all committed to a jazzy sax soundtrack.

After the midpoint, I was pondering whether to continue watching as the movie descended further and further into mindlessness. I guess I only watched to the end in order to see how low it would actually sink.

This movie is as bad as "Knock Off", "The Negotiator", and "Showdown in Little Tokyo", probably worse.

Save yourself the time. If you want to see a ultra-hip, stylized, aesthetics-over-plot Asian movie (Hong Kong), try "The Odd One Dies" (1997) or "Fallen Angels" (1995), both with Takeshi Kaneshiro.

Or if you want to see an equally obtuse and mindless film, but very stylized action pulp noire, try Seijun Suzuki's classic "Branded To Kill" (1967).

"Brother" is a complete bomb. I give it 1/10, which is a rating I reserve only for very "special" movies.

The Long Good Friday (1980)

Dreadful disappointment ... as bad as Godfather III

[2/10 · 6 May 2000]

I vaguely remembered this movie from nearly twenty years ago, probably from Saturday afternoon TV. Watching it again demonstrated how poor one's memory can be, or how much one's critical judgement and artistic appreciation can develop in two decades.

I really like both Hoskins and Mirren in other works. And I like good gangster films. This movie is not one of them.

Underdeveloped, one-dimensional characters with a needlessly opaque and contrived plot, in an unbelievably short time frame, with bad music, worse acting, and horrid editing, make this a movie I could never watch again. A real 70's-ish overblown sequence of bad scenes, tied together in a 114 minute waste of time. Anybody want to buy a DVD?

I won't go so far as to say that it's worse than Coppola's Godfather III, but it comes close!

The Greatest Places (1998)

Hardly a Great IMAX Movie ... Disappointing

[2/10 · 22 December 1999]

Greatest Places has a syrupy sweet, cloying narrative. (On several occasions I covered my ears in order to endure it.) I give this movie a 2. If Avery Brooks only could have had laryngitis that day, this movie could have earned a 5 instead (without *any* narrative at all). The low grade of the movie isn't Brooks' fault per se, although he does a superlative job of drawing out each sappy line, with his skilled melodic baritone. Afterwards, watching the credits, I cursed the writer.

Moving on to the cinematography: Some of the images were, as your would expect, breathtaking. I was especially enamored of Madagascar and Namib. But the enormous power of IMAX imagery was blown to bits with choppy editing and constant (dozens) of abrupt cuts (every 15 to 20 seconds) from panoramic landscapes to adorably cute animals or close-up flora & fauna.

Uggghh! Very frustrating! Every time the imagery sweeps over you with power and grandeur, it's crudely jerked away and replaced with something to make a 3rd grader go "awww ... isn't that cute". The frequent changes in visual scale -- from viewing 15,000 feet of landscape to face-shots of cute animals -- are enough to give you vertigo, or at least a headache.

The movie had a valid concept. But together with a horrible writer, an outstanding saccharine execution of a juvenile narrative, and "gotta get a little of every shot in here" editing, the entire movie was lost. I wouldn't watch it again if you paid me. (But I would gladly order some 16 x 20 color prints from the movie's imagery.) What a shame.

Knock Off (1998)

Dreadful movie. "There is no substitute"? Good. Great.

[1/10 · 15 September 1998]

I wouldn't be able to summarize this movie since i left after 35 minutes. I was there on a free pass and my friend and I both decided to leave. It was free, which meant it was still too expensive to merit our further attention.

What a pointless, poorly acted, poorly written, poorly shot (all those stupid video-esque slo-mo effects!), poorly edited piece of cinematic caca.