sticky-4 Reviews

The Usual Suspects (1995)

big BIG DISAPPOINTMENT

[30 October 1999]

I finally got around to seeing THE USUAL SUSPECTS, and I had heard so much good things about it and after seeing it I was sorely disappointed. This movie is sooooooo convoluted from start to finish, it's slow, it starts to get a little action going and then it gets even slower. There's a couple of scenes where the main cast (byrne, spacey, baldwin, pollock, etc.) just seem to be sitting around on their butts doin nothing but yakking away, no action, and a lot of uninteresting dialogue.

The ending is interesting, and I do like Kevin Spacey's performance it most everything he does.

I guess it's one of those things where the director knows what is going to happen, goes over the story every day they shoot it, knows every thing about it, and gets to the point where he thinks we the viewer should understand everything he's directing. Not so. If this is vintage Bryan Singer direction, then I have a VERY BAD feeling for his upcoming X-MEN project.

Stigmata (1999)

Interesting, but there should have been more to it

[19 October 1999]

While this movie has caught the ire of the Catholic Church, because of certain revelations within that the church goes to great lengths to cover up, on the outside it's a loosely written movie of a girl who exhibits the stigmatic phenomena. It's a bit far reaching because the only reason Patricia Arquette's characters is exhibiting Stigmata is because she is in possession of rosary beads that were stolen from the coffin of a dead priest. Gabriel Byrne co stars as a priest/scientist who investigates miracles for the church who happens upon her. We find out that she's an atheist, and Byrne explains that only the most devout believers ever experience Stigmata. The movie offers no believable reason for her experience and then makes a contrived attempt at romance between these two characters. Not a family movie nor is it a very scary movie either

Fight Club (1999)

A LESSON IN MODERN ANARCHY

[7/10 · 19 October 1999]

The movie Fight Club has come under a lot of fire regarding it's violent content, its underlying message of anarchy, and how it correlates to recent shooting violence in our society It tells the story of Edward Norton's character, a 30-year old insomniac whose life is stuck in a rut. He meets Brad Pitt's character and they have a few beers, go into the rear parking lot of the bar where Pitt tells him to `Hit me, as hard as you can.' They get into a fight and afterwards they feel pretty good about it. They end up doing this on a regular basis and soon other people want to get in on it and inevitably, FIGHT CLUB is born. But soon it gets more members and grows terribly out of control by including mass vandalism, theft, and destruction. There is a lot of expected violence here and I mean lots of blood. The overall philosophy of the movie is `Wake up, look at your life, get out of your rut and do something with it before you die.' It also tries to create a love triangle between Norton, Pitt , Helena Bonham that doesn't work for this movie. It has a major twist towards the end, not unlike The 6th Sense. The ending is ambiguous and unclear but is typical of director David Fincher's mind-flip style of directing. If I were to rate this movie from a moral perspective I'd say that it has none. If I were to rate from a storytelling perspective, I'd give it a 7 out of 10.

Jakob the Liar (1999)

Robin Williams' List

[7/10 · 19 October 1999]

Perhaps best described as Good Morning Vietnam meets Schindler's List. Robin Williams plays Jakob, a Jewish prisoner in WW2 Germany who hears some news about the approaching Russian army, and lets it slip to his friend Mischa who believes Jakob has a radio to have gotten this news. Rumors then spread throughout the Jewish ghetto and soon everyone believes he has a radio, so he decides to make up news in order to give them some sense of hope in this holocaust. It's important to note that Williams is NOT trying to be funny in this film, which is appropriate considering the setting. Well written and produced with noteworthy performances

Tarzan (1999)

Overall Entertaining

[7/10 · 20 June 1999]

Disney's latest entry is full of its usual breath taking visuals and great vocal performances. I liked: the 3D swinging sequences, Kala's rescue of the human infant, the overall character developement.

Disney did well creating the main plot of a hero trying to figure out where he belongs, but the addition of the villianous Clayton seems thrown in unnecessarily, Rosie O'Donell's Terk character is far more annoying than Jar Jar could ever be. So the big problem here is that they have a good serious story that they try to mix in with "the usual comic relief in a Disney film" I don't need a good story that all of a sudden has Elephants talking about how pirhana's are native to South America and other antics that just don't seem to fit this story.

Kids will love this, Adults will probably enjoy it too. But mind you this, From Little Mermaid to Mulan, the past Disney films have depicted 1 - 3 deaths in each of them, TARZAN has 6 deaths in it, and while I have never read the original story by Edgar Rice Burroughs, I found Disney's version to be very predictable. Beauty and the Beast it ain't, but if you can watch a movie without being so nit picky you should be able to enjoy this film.

Virus (1999)

Virus tries to be like to many other movies

[4/10 · 16 January 1999]

Virus starts off well enough setting things up, the Mir Space Station encounters a spacial anomaly just as it is sending a transmission to a russian science and research ship in the north atlantic. The ship recieves it and their computer core goes haywire. Jamie Lee Curtis and crew happen on the ship while in the eye of a hurricane. Something is mentioned about maritime rules that if an abandoned ship is floating in international waters it is up for salvage. Soon they discover they are not alone on the ship. After this point, the movie becomes very redundant, they encounter some aspect of this cybernetic creature, they fight they run away, repeat as necessary. It then comes to a very predictable and quick ending. The crew's connection with each other is bland and uninteresting. In my opinion if you want a good movie on cyborgs, see the terminator films, robocop, or star trek first contact.

Batman Forever (1995)

What's going on here

[13 November 1998]

Director Joel Shumacher has taken a franchise that Tim Burton made just right, and decided to throw unecessary color into it.

Val Kilmer: Not bad as batman but he looked too young and it sounded as if he was trying to imitate Michael Keaton's voice as Batman

Chris O'donnell: Too obnoxious, too tall, too old. Robin was supposed to be around 13 when he first joined Batman

Jim Carrey: Personally I think he would have made a better Joker than Riddler. Why does his hair go from being a red crew cut to dirty blonde throughout the movie.

Tommy Lee Jones: He looked the part well, but let's remember, Two-Face is a man suffering from Skitzophrenia, he HAS two personalities, but all thru the movie we just see his Two-Face personality. There should have been a conflict between his two personalities.

Another problem I have is that both Riddler and Two-Face have Joker personalities, something neither of them should have. And what is it with Batman and him losing his vehicles with each film. Gotham is waaaaay too colorful for accuracy. The Batmobile looks nice and wicked, too bad it looked like a toy in the next movie. Forever makes Returns look soooo much better by comparison.

Batman & Robin (1997)

Why it sucked

[1/10 · 10 November 1998]

OK let's break this down to why Batman and Robin failed so miserably.

10. Batman: Clooney isn't that bad, but it would have helped if he played the character as more brooding and darker.

9. Robin: Chris Odonnel is too old and too tall for this part. Dick Grayson was never this immature in the comics.

8. Batgirl: The character had no reason for being in this movie, it was as if they finished writing it (writing?) and someone said let's put batgirl in this, just...add her in tagging along after the heroes. And she's not Alfred's neice, she's Commisioner Gordon's daughter. (Hey Joel, try reading a comic before you make a movie based on that comic)

7. Mr. Freeze: Arnold wasn't that bad, but let's face it, hundreds of one-liner-cold-puns will kill anyone's career.

6. Poison Ivy: Uma I thought could act, but this role was so ridiculous, and so were her outfits, they looked like they came right out of the 60's. And when she rose (or grew) from the ground and immediatley knew what forign chemicals were running thru her system was laughable.

5. Bane: Let's see, in the comic he is a veritable Dr. Moriarty to Batman's Sherlock Holmes, in the movie he was some dumb shmuck, (like the people who paid to see this) Jeep Swenson (R.I.P.) looks too bulky for the part, Arnold would have been much better in this role.

4. The soundtrack: what soundtrack, they spent all their money on stars and special effects so they just used Goldenthal's soundtrack from Batman Forever.

3. Alfred: Was he dying from sickness, or just trying to die. Since when would he know how to program his brain algorithms into the batcomputer, how would he know her exact measurements, and if he knew Batgirl was going to discover the secret, why not just tell her.

2. The production: THERE WAS TOO MUCH OF IT. All the stunts looked fake, especially at the start when robin burst thru the window on his motorcycle and it just...floats to the ground. By the way how many times are we going to see a superhero drop in thru a skylight.

1. Joel Shumacher: he said Batman should be over his grief of the death of his parents and therefore a little more light hearted ... of course if BATMAN ever was over that, he would stop being BATMAN, that's the only reason he does what he does is because of his grief.

Gotham City has become such a colorful and happy place to live now. I swear I was expecting Aunt Harriett Cooper to pop out someplace in the mansion and offer them milk and cookies. Every few minutes, I found myself looking away and saying "I...I can't belive it's this bad." When BATMAN came out, it was great, when RETURNS came out,I had mixed feelings about it, when FOREVER came out I thought it made RETURNS look so good by comparison, now AND ROBIN comes out and it actually makes FOREVER look good. Let's just hope that WB learns their lesson...But I doubt it.

Natural Born Killers (1994)

One of Hollywood's biggest embarrassments

[10 November 1998]

NBK is definitely an embarassment for Hollywood, not only is the subject completely inappropriate for anyone, but the filming of it using 3 different kinds of film stocks WILL give you a headache. I know this is satire, but the hero and heroine are serial killers, it's almost as if Stone wants you to root for them, to encourage them to kill, and to boo the people who try to stop them. In this day and age of shootings and murders, we don't need this trash.