Reviews
The Box (2003)
Avoid this schlock at all costs!!!
The acting by Russo wasn't bad, but that's the best I can say about it. This is the worst movie that I have seen since The Thin Red Line and Lost in Translation. There are too many unanswered questions: How did the cops get involved? Who's money was it? Where did it come from? (Maybe the Greek Gods like in Clash of the Titans?) Why didn't the guy know about bullet proof vests? Why did Dora (Russell) have to say "They raped me"?
It is terrible. Seeing Steve Railsback who looked worse with his lip gloss than my 93 y.o. grandmother when she misses with red lipstick.
Russells' character was a stripper? Good thing they didn't show it. Maybe in the fifties?
The Thin Red Line (1998)
Fat Chartreuse Square
Someone who came in late behind me echoed my sentiments when he asked me: "Is this Thin Red Line?". It starts off with a Robinson Crusoe-like abandoned island with two soldiers whom we find out 15 minutes later are AWOL. The whole Army is AWOL in this movie. I leaned to my companion and said: "They need to Kick it up a notch!".
I cannot believe that I sat through the three hour marathon of an attempt to be artistic and masterful with cinematographic scenery and images. I hoped that it might get better but it never did. Unless you liked Ishtar, Home for the Holidays or Sharky's Machine then this movie plainly stunk!
I am incredulously amazed at the inept reviewers who say that they "loved" this movie or that it even merited a viewing by any other member of the human race. Perhaps they are kow towing to the movie industry or are afraid of all the top name actors in their bit parts. These parts are flung together like a 10,000 piece jigsaw puzzle which do not fit together.
Okay, there was one small part played by John Cusack that was meritorious as he and a handful of soldiers took the top of one hill. One good scene does not make a movie worth seeing!
It was as nauseating to sit through as a scene where one soldier, with a handful of freshly pulled Japanese prisoners' gold teeth, tortures a Japanese general threatening with the same fate. Later on we see a scene with the same soldier languishing in anguish over what he has done but then the movie fades to another boring scene which was unremarkable. They never tell us what becomes or Mr. Teeth puller.
Please do yourself and yor friends a favor and never see this movie, even on video tape. It is truly that bad!!