Change Your Image
chrisbower78
Reviews
Deuces Wild (2002)
impressively disappointing; disappointingly impressive
I had no expectations for this movie. I saw it because my flatmate has a huge crush on Norman Reedus, and figured it would be a Boiler Room/Fast and the Furious type teenage boy flick. I was wrong. The acting and script were very strong, borrowing the absolute best plot points from movies like West Side Story (love conquers gang lines) and A Bronx Tale (movie title, name of hangout, soundtrack, emotional depth). With the addition of strong sibling relationships and even stronger female leads who do much more than just sing and dance about "a place for us," there was some serious potential for Deuces Wild to be a smart, important film. Surprised me! However, this was buried deeply under pseudo-Matrix, Fight Club-wannabe testosterone b.s. Last time I checked, CGI wasn't necessary to show bricks falling through the air, and it left me cold with wasted potential.
Cannibal Holocaust (1980)
awful, disgusting, hyper-misogynistic
This is, I can safely say, the worst movie I have ever seen in my entire life. I am not stranger to gratuitous gore and violence. I have an Evil Dead/Meet the Feebles/Leprechan, etc., sense of humour,and I have spent probably thousands of hours watching and loving spatteringly obscene and supposedly "shocking" Asian and Italian horror films. But this was different. This was every kind of inappropriately uncinematic disgustingness imaginable, including what is likely the most disturbing rape scene ever filmed. It was not so much gore (because there really isn't all that much), but the absolute ugliness of human behavior--and the "anthropologists" are the most "uncivilized" tribe of people in the whole film. Before I watched this movie, I had never seen a film that made me feel physically dirty before. Do not watch this!!!
Les Misérables (1998)
um... where's eponine?
the point of les mis, for me, and yes, i read the unabridged 1400+ page novel, and have seen the musical, is that cosette is a selfish little spoiled brat. the most complex and interesting characters in both the novel and musical are eponine and javert, and both are flattened, minimalized and obscured in this starparty of a film, in favor or pumping up the much blander characters cosette, valjean, and marius. what was the director of this movie thinking by ignoring the phenomenal characters that already existed? the unrequited love of eponine for marius is the most incredible love story i have ever encountered, and is not even acknowledged by this film. a textbook example of a classic being hollywoodized and destroyed by being committed to film. if we want a happy, no-obstacles love story, we'll watch disney. this was a horrible travesty of what was at one point an incredible story.