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shepdog
Reviews
Grizzly Man (2005)
Chalk One Up for the Bears
I'm torn between rating the high quality of the documentary and low quality of the self-absorbed prat that is its subject matter. Herzog displays terrific film-making prowess but Treadwell's mugging and grandstanding only convince the viewer that the bears are a secondary issue to Treadwell's attempts at self-architected stardom. Why is Hollywood lionizing this guy? Because he died and nobody wants to hurt the feelings of his surviving family members and friends by telling them that the jackass had it coming, that he didn't protect anything (let alone bears and foxes) and was most likely responsible for the death of another human being? I feel sorry for families in these situations. They want to think good thoughts about the departed loved ones and overlook any faults. This is normal. The problem arises when these same family members, or filmmakers or authors decide to make media martyrs out of cretins who are dead because they exercised extremely poor judgment. Rather than state the hard truth (e.g. that my son or daughter or the subject of my film or book exercised very poor judgment died as a result) to help others avoid making similarly bad decisions, they glamorize the idiocy potentially encouraging other impressionable people to do the same stupid things. I'll bet as those animals were cracking open his skull with all the psi bear jaws are capable of, Treadwell must have been kicking himself that hadn't toughed it out in LA a bit longer, auditioning for bit parts on "Frasier."
Meet the Fockers (2004)
Laugh-a-Leap-Year Comedy
Terrible and unfunny follow-up to very funny Meet the Parents. Roach is a talented director and Stiller is usually always funny. I have no idea what was being attempted here but whatever it was, it failed miserably. Hoffman and Streisand sounds like it should have worked but didn't. Roach simply permitted these two 'stars' to run wild and without any directorial guidance, they resorted to boring Jewish parent stereotypes. With Dustin and Babs trying to 'out-Jew' one another and Stiller and DeNiro given little to do except mug for the camera, the whole thing ends up one big bore. Also, leave politics out of it. Do the ham-fisted cretins who run Hollywood think all of its audience members are such dullards that we don't noticed the ideologies being pushed or being delivered? Okay! Okay!! I get it!!! Peace-loving, pot-smoking hippies who protested in the 1960s good; government and intelligence community personnel bad! Yeah, thanks for the newsflash, Tonto. Jezus! All the subtlety of being reamed by an elephant. I only hope the third film is better.
Little Richard (2000)
Leon terribly miscast as LR; film misfires entirely
I've seen enough of both Little Richard in interviews and in performances and enough of poor Leon pigeonholed into these 50s/60s musical bio pics to know that Leon was not the right actor for this role. Leon was so right as David Ruffin in The Temptations, but fails utterly to capture the essence of Little Richard in this film.
Actor Miguel Núñez who played Little Richard in "Why Do Fools Fall in Love?" was a much more suitable choice, having pulled off the musician's powerful but effeminate persona.
If the performances are unconvincing then the film will be as well. And this is what has happened here. Glossed over or missed entirely are LR's forays into homosexuality and voyeurism. What "The Temptations" did so well in capturing the rise of the group, warts and all, this film misses by a wide mark.
What is going on with director Robert Townsend who started off so well with "The Hollywood Shuffle"? He's a talented, funny guy but hasn't delivered anything near that first effort.
Salem's Lot (2004)
What a disappointing load!
It's okay to update a story to include antique dealers that now do business on the internet as well as their traditional brick & mortar establishmentbut, but why do feeble, and I mean feeble, hack Hollywood writers always try to politicize everything? This is a horror movie not "Born on the bloody Fourth of July!" The protagonist is now an investigative writer who pens anti-war books and puts his military rescuers in prison, the teacher is a pillow-biter, Mrs. Norton is a single mother, the priest is a drunk and an implied child molestor, etc. Worse than that, the vampires are now flesh eaters and given to "poignant" farewell speeches to former lovers instead of drainging their blood! The book is one of King's best and even the David Soul TVM had a nice creep factor to it. What in god's name were the producers thinking of when they produced this steaming pile of road apples?
Runaway Jury (2003)
Anti-Gun Lobby Propaganda
What a waste of a great cast. Another agenda-laden film featuring a silly, improbable plot of "activists" engaged in jury tampering, extortion and other criminal activity, attempting to justify the whole sorry mess as altruism. So painfully cartoonish were the characters, so blatant was the film's anti-gun screed, that I'm stunned this made it out of the script development phase. This film reminds me of similar tripe like The Contender and The Life of David Gale, whose producers are not content to provide thought-provoking entertainment but to distort issues and sledgehammer their political message over the heads of the unwashed masses until we see things their way. Again, what a waste of a great cast. Discriminating cinema goers should avoid this one.
Pearl Harbor (2001)
Between U-571 and this POS...
Between U-571 and this POS, the U.S. is trying damn hard to one up the likes of China, Japan, Russia and most of the Middle East in attempts at overt, revisionist history. Justifying Japan's brutal and aggressive campaign throughout Asia and the attack on Pearl Harbor? FDR standing in front of his advisors to make a point? Japanese fighters strafing people on taramcs and survivors floating in the water? Bombing the hospital? Dory Miller shooting down planes? The script also contains some of the worst 'romantic' dialog since "Attack of the Clones." Honestly, Ben-Lo should attempt another career path...seriously. I'm beginning to think the same about Beckinsale. She was terrific in "Cold Comfort Farm" but this and "Underworld" are near career-killers. I advoided this film for nearly 3 years but my curiosity got the best of me and boy am I sorry for letting it happen. Cripes, what a pinched loaf.
The Matrix Revolutions (2003)
Painful to watch! What a piece of junk.
The first film is such a great piece of eye candy. What were the writers and directors thinking with these last two? Maybe Larry Wachowski is clearly more interested in his new vulva than the plots and scripts of the subsequent Matrix films. After Reloaded, I didn't think it could get worse; I was wrong. Save your hard earned money and catch it for $3.00 at your local cinema draft house.
The Secret Lives of Dentists (2002)
Like sitting through a root canal
Based upon the quality of The Moderns and Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle, I went to see this at the D.C. Film Festival and walked out of the theater and straight into a saloon to mourn the loss of my ticket money with some gin. Insufferable.
The Faculty (1998)
What a crappy piece of thievery!!! Awful.
You know a film is bad when the previews pander shamelessly to teens by featuring the alternative musical flavor of the week underscoring a cast of 20 somethings passing themselves off as 15 year old high schoolers without a zit or set of braces in the crowd.
Even worse the script and direction are bad. There is abolutely no suspenseful build up to any of the scenes and the characters spend half the movie telling each other to f*** off and referring to other films. There was once a time in Hollywood when the writers were actually clever, witty and often original. This early generation of writers were not weened on television and didn't need to make constant inside references to other films to advance a plot.
This is no homage to "The Thing" or "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" or "Invaders From Mars" which while limited by their respective budgets managed to achieve something on screen that this film utterly fails to do. This is plain theft with little or no reverence for its source material.
I only wish the aliens had gotten to all the cast members earlier in the proceedings. That's 90 minutes of my life that I'm never getting back.
U-571 (2000)
More revisionist Hollywood crap!
A previous user comments state that this picture has been 'meticulously researched???!!!' By whom was this research undertaken? Hopefully, they're not teaching history to your child in school.
A black crewman on a combat submarine in WWII? With a "wez" (i.e. van dyke chin whiskers) even? Welcome aboard "G!"
No wonder the Brits were tearing out their collective hairs. The Americans capturing the Enigma device! Good one. No wonder we yanks can neither spell nor pin-point Canada on the map. Keep up the good work, Hollywood.