Reviews
The Great Raid (2005)
Dull
One of the dullest films I've seen in some time. There is no single thing to recommend it. The script is uninspiring; the cast range from the adequate (Fiennes, Csokas)) through the bad (Franco, Nielsen) to the truly atrocious (Bratt, giving a performance of such stupendous badness it's difficult not to fall asleep when he opens his mouth). The director would appear to have done nothing more than say 'okay, stand there and say your lines'. It does liven up when the 'great raid' actually occurs, but that is over 90 minutes in. The music is the generic, ponderous drone you would expect to hear on this type of flag-waver.
A chore to watch, and it's a shame that the events that inspired it weren't better represented.
Darkness (2002)
Dullness
Tedious and ultimately incomprehensible drivel. I found nothing of interest in it anywhere. The film-makers' approach seemed to be: presenting an uninteresting cast with a boring script and asking them to deliver it in the most half-hearted way they could, preferably by not moving if they could help it. In that respect it's an unqualified success. Before it was halfway through I was searching for reasons not to turn it off. Every minute felt like five - its only saving graces were the beginning of the end credits at the 80-minute mark, and Lena Olin's hilarious comment in the DVD 'making of' that it was so terrifying she couldn't bring herself to watch it.
Meet the Fockers (2004)
As funny as cancer
I never thought I'd see the day when the words 'Robert De Niro' would guarantee one thing only - you are about to watch a bad movie. To be fair though, the blame is not really his. Meet the Parents had the occasional funny part, and they were all in the trailer.
Humour is completely absent from this. I wasn't expecting much, and was still gravely disappointed. Everyone in the cast deserves better material. The sight of De Niro in a strap-on breast feeding device is a truly sad sight and an indication of how low his career has sunk. The only unfunnier things on display here are Hoffman and Streisand. Their characters are simply embarrassing. I admit to being unable to watch the whole film, so if it picked up towards the end I would give it more than one point. But it was the longest 54 minutes of my life.
Hotel Rwanda (2004)
So-so
It seems that the more shocking and tragic the events that a film is based on, the easier it is to go completely gaga and convince yourself that the film is good.
This film isn't bad. The events it portrays truly are a black mark in the history books, and it does well in not sensationalising what happened. On the minus side though, I thought it did seem to gloss over the whole thing. There just did not seem to be any sense of outrage. To get the point across there should have been more on-screen atrocity - not with a view to satisfying gore hounds, but to emphasise why the world should be ashamed of what happened. Consequently there was virtually no dramatic impact in it for me. As I said, it wasn't bad - neither was it particularly good. The script and acting were acceptable, but I wouldn't give it any more praise than that.
Elektra (2005)
One of the worst of the year
I must have watched a different version of Elektra from the one receiving praise here. I thought it began in mediocre fashion and trickled steadily downhill. I think Garner has good stuff in her but she was wasted in this. So tedious and toe-curlingly awful in every respect that I was looking for reasons not to turn off from round about the halfway mark - and I'm a tolerant viewer. I'm a film fan so I'll watch bad films as well as good. And as for the 'action', a term I used loosely - I actually gave up on this somewhere in the middle of what I think was supposed to be a climactic fight. To be avoided.
I have to type more words before this is accepted. I hope this will do as I can't think of any more to say about it.
Exorcist: The Beginning (2004)
A complete waste of time
Starts off with a man being an ex-priest. Since the same man starts off the original Exorcist as a priest, you're not playing with a full deck if you can't work out where this one is going. God 1, Devil 0 after penalty shootout. Stellan Skarsgaard is a capable actor but he's on autopilot here. The plot makes the Phantom Menace's look interesting. There's an ex-Bond babe in there demonstrating exactly why Bond babes usually fade into obscurity once England's finest has had them. As much gore as the 15 (in UK) rating will allow. Computer fx by kids who skipped through the hyena chapter of the manual. Worst of all, it was given to a director who can't make any of it even half as scary as that fish with the huge teeth that almost snacked on Nemo. Only recommended if you think Rick Moranis would make a good Hannibal Lecter.
I Heart Huckabees (2004)
The Film Industry Goes Interactive
Yes, perhaps the first interactive film ever - the viewer actually wants to kill the director, writers, actors and anyone else who had anything to do with it. You know those comedies that try to be like Airplane and completely mess up by missing what it was that made Airplane so funny (if you don't know, it's because everyone in Airplane played it straight). Well, this one bends over so far backwards to be eccentric (like for instance The Royal Tenenbaums) that its head disappears right up its own rectum. A cast who should (mainly) know better spout gibberish at machine gun speed, often all at the same time. It's a garbled pseudo-intellectual mess from beginning to end. I lie, I gave up halfway through. It's so pretentious and smug and 'crazy' it makes Bad Boys 2 look good. And believe me, I'm being kind.
Cellular (2004)
A love letter to mobile phones
Reasonably entertaining, though lazy and unoriginal. Kidnap victim Kim Basinger, fiddling with a broken phone and crossing wires at random, makes a call picked up by a Baywatch reject all of two miles away...and hey, they're in Los Angeles already, so Hollywood doesn't even have to go five miles to film the whole thing! William H Macy is an excellent actor given little to do in this. Then again, his character is lifted directly from Robert Duvall's in 'Falling Down' - middle-aged desk cop henpecked by wife and about to retire is the only one to pick up on what's happening and solves everything in a shoot-out on a pier - though Macy is admittedly under the pier. Basinger proves yet again that LA Confidential was a surprising blip on an otherwise flatline of a career; how anyone thinks she can act is beyond me, and having this fiasco in the central role serious undermines the entertainment value.
Disengage your brain and you will probably be entertained - I was, given the above reservations. If obvious product placement in films annoys you, don't even think about looking at the closing credits. And if you're a fan of Nina Simone, beware - there is a truly horrific desecration of Sinner Man on the soundtrack.
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
Virtually spot-on
This film has had a ridiculous amount of superlatives heaped upon it, and for once they are justified. You don't need to have read the books to enjoy it, but it helps. With such a landmark source material, everyone is going to have their own idea of what it should look like, and I think Peter Jackson and his crew must have read my mind.
Like many, I am sure, I had misgivings when I heard of the project. Too often a good book is translated to screen and ruined in the process, and in these days of over-reliance on computer FX that feat is even easier to accomplish. This is not the case here; although it could not really have been attempted without the technical wizardry available today, the effects never look 'tacked on' and blend comfortably with the natural location filming.
The casting was inspired - a few well-known actors, but no huge star names to potentially sink the project. In fact the performances in general were far better than one could rightfully expect in what is, on one level, basically a fairy story. If I had to pick one for special note it would have to be Ian McKellen as Gandalf; he is one of the best stage and film actors alive today, period, and there are moments of sheer brilliance - in fact if I had to pick a single moment from the film it would be the look on Gandalf's face when, at the council of Elrond, Frodo volunteers to take the ring to Mordor. I don't think I've ever seen such a mix of emotions put into a single expression, and the impact of that one shot is absolutely tremendous.
If I have one criticism, it's that I felt the sequence in Lothlorien seemed too short, but given the running time of the theatrical release it's understandable - there is simply too much to fit in. The DVD extended edition has additional footage here and, for me, it was much better. In fact all the additional footage added to the experience, rather than merely being padding. We can only be thankful that Jackson resisted pressure to condense the whole trilogy into one film, and I get the feeling that, excellent though this is, things are going to get better.
Siu Lam juk kau (2001)
Funniest film of last 2 years
The US title for this is 'Kung Fu Soccer' as opposed to Shaolin Soccer. This is a pity, as people who don't like martial arts films will avoid it. This is NOT a kung fu film; in fact there's virtually no kung fu in it, indeed fighting of any sort.
It's a classic 'sporting underdog' film. A Shaolin kung-fu practitioner is looking for a way of bringing his kung fu to the masses, and with the help of a disgraced former football star, gets together with his disillusioned Shaolin pals and enters a tournament. What you end up with is probably the funniest film of the last couple of years, with a bit of everything in it. Quite simply it has to be seen to be believed.
A word of warning - this is a review of the original Cantonese film, available on DVD. The film is one of many from Hong Kong recently bought up by Buenavista for release in the United States, and is to be released early in 2003 in a dubbed, re-edited and generally butchered form, presumably to make it more palatable to morons. I've seen the trailer for this new version, and it's hideous.
Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi (2001)
Masterpiece
(Original subtitled version reviewed)
Proof, as though it were needed, that the far-and-away best animators are in Japan. This is a magical story, and a true family film; and by that I don't mean a sickly-sweet singalong, which is what Disney would have produced.
I'm a recent convert to Japanese animation, for the same reason (ignorance) that still turns many people off it. For too long I thought that anime films were full of rampaging robots and huge masses of tentacles bent on nothing but rape and destruction. Admittedly there are plenty like that (some of them good) but there's much more to the genre. I've since discovered that anything from Miyazaki's Studio Ghibli leaves most other animated films way behind, and this, the most recent, is probably the best.
Minority Report (2002)
Chronic
An interesting story, for which credit goes to Mr Dick, but the main flaw for me was the running time. It just seemed to go on and on. And on. And at times it just looked a little too contrived, as if the production designers wanted to fit in too much gimmickry. I can't see Cruise and co 'conducting' images by waving their hands all over the place, and waiting for wooden balls to be etched, when the same effect could have been achieved more efficiently by a mouse and a monitor. That may sound trivial, but the need for speed is clearly demonstrated in the opening sequence where a crime of passion is prevented by a mere second.
That said, it isn't too bad on the whole - it should have been much better though, given the heavyweight talented involved.
Pearl Harbor (2001)
I hope Rolf Harris got the royalties
I've been waiting for years for someone to make a movie based on the Rolf Harris song 'Two Little Boys'. Actually, I haven't at all - but this is what this rubbish is. Of course it's spectacular, with an inflated budget frittered on this historical event, you know it's not going to be anything else... and unfortunately, it isn't any thing else.
Admittedly the biggest box-office receipts for Hollywood product come from home ground, but please - scenes in which American actors (and in this case one of the cheesiest) weep over the Stars and Stripes are impossible to swallow for the rest of the world.
Armageddon (1998)
Armageddin' out of this cinema
Being a big movie fan, I'll even watch bad ones...but I came the closest I've ever come to walking out when I paid to see this one.
The trailer had me drooling - yes, even after thirty years of cinema-going I'm still taken in. When I saw the finished product I realised why the trailer looked good; it had no dialogue in it. There's a fine line between a good no-brainer action film, and a film that requires a lobotomy before viewing. Guess which side of the line this one falls on.
Lat sau san taam (1992)
The Daddy of action films
(Note - this is a review of the original subtitled version).
If you're a fan of Hong Kong action films, you know what this belated review is going to say. If you're not, and you're looking for an introduction to the genre, watch something else. Why? Because apart from one or two contenders, this one leaves all other action films for dead, and if you watch it first, all the others you watch after it will be a disappointment.
In fact, the uninitiated may find it too much to take at first viewing. The ludicrous body count in the first ten minutes is indicative of what is to follow, and the whole in-yer-face bulletfest ends in a shootout that occupies over half an hour of screen time. In the hands of lesser film-makers this would be too much of a good thing, but not here.
Chow Yun Fat, apart from being a brilliant actor, is simply the coolest packer of guns on celluloid. Tony Leung, so far (criminally) hardly known outside HK, is an even better actor, and the two make one hell of a team. And though you wouldn't know it from the mainstream tat he's churning out now, John Woo used to be the foremost action director in Hong Kong before he packed his bags and legged it to Hollywood.
Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002)
Attack of Director Sitting on Laurels
When I first saw this on theatrical release I thought yes, it's better that Phantom Menace, perhaps it's a return to form. A second viewing on DVD soon changed that. I wanted it to be up to the standard of the original trilogy, but sadly it isn't. Take out Yoda's finest moment and there's precious little left.
The script is poor - hard to believe that there are big-budget films from respected directors that still have the lines 'i've got a bad feeling about this'. The special effects are (mostly) as good as you'd expect but since you can see brilliant effects in a typical 20-second TV commercial these days, that isn't enough. The acting is variable - Ewan MacGregor is a fine actor but in this, as in Episode 1, he is just miscast and wooden. But perhaps the real kiss of death is Hayden Christensen as Anakin. The character is supposed to be undergoing the inner turmoil that will eventually see him turning to the dark side, but he comes across as a whining teenage brat who'd be more at home in a TV soap. I never thought I'd find myself doing this in a Star Wars film, but in the 'getting it on' scenes between him and Portman, I had to fast forward. I just couldn't stand it.
And finally - I may be missing something fundamental, but I cannot help but wonder why none of the clones actually look like the original they were cloned from. Give up now George, or at least hand over the reins to somebody else for Episode 3.
Bad Company (2002)
Bad film, period
Here we go again. America's under threat from terrorists with a nuke. Plot rehash #96b. Rock finds a brother he never had is dead and only he can save everybody, and accepts the news without even blinking an eye. Hopkins in baseball cap chewing a toothpick is one of the most laughable, in-it-for-the-money miscastings in a long while, and the dog that appears 30 minutes in probably wrote the script, if there had been one. God bless America.
Rollerball (2002)
Contender for Worst Film of Year
The kindest thing one could say about this is that it looks like a WWF promo assembled at random from bits of film salvaged from a cutting-room floor, with one of the worst soundtracks you could imagine played backwards on top.
Resident Evil (2002)
Will they ever learn?
I cannot understand why film makers take a source material that they think will make a good film, then take out everything that made it good in the first place. For the uninitiated, the original RE video game was a smash hit because it featured, for the most part, a lone character in a genuinely spooky mansion never knowing what unspeakable horror was round the next corner; it also had creepily atmospheric music and unfortunate voice acting. Sadly, the only element that has been retained for the film version is the last.
Writer-director Anderson must take the blame, and one can only assume that a) he never actually saw the game; and b) he is so out of touch that he thinks if you like video games and horror, you must be a young, male, heavy metal fan. This mess begins and ends with lame attempts to have a not particularly talented supermodel appear on screen wearing as few clothes as possible. In between is the aforementioned metal cacophony, bad acting and uninspiring special effects. The tension that brought the game to life is completely lacking; the action is rarely involving; and the (very) occasional shock is not enough to compensate for the unintentional hilarity of Jovovich, clad in a fashion disaster, turning into an acrobat and wrenching zombie necks with her thighs.
The scariest thing about it is that the sequel, as far as I know, is already in production - but if you avoid the bargain bins at your local rental outlet, you may be lucky and miss it altogether.
Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001)
Believe (most of) the hype
I didn't find Hedwig as hysterically funny as most of the reviews I'd read had led me to believe it was, but it is bitingly funny none the less. It's gritty, emotional (in a real rather than sentimental sense) and peppered with moments of wicked humour courtesy of the ongoing narration by the central character, a virtual one-man tour de force by John Cameron Mitchell. Although the music is essential to the story I did find that there was perhaps too much of it but this could be because much of it is (presumably intentionally) awful.
Destined to be a late-night favourite at cult screenings, partly because of the singalong nature of the songs, with lyrics appearing on screen at one point. Fans of the Rocky Horror Picture Show will lap it up, but you don't have to like that overrated, odious piece of celluloid claptrap to enjoy the fabulous Hedwig.
The One (2001)
Leave your brain at the funhouse door
Take your brain out first and you'll probably have immense fun with this parallel-universe nonsense that plotwise is very similar to Highlander, but with added martial arts. Jet Li plays a cop turned bad who spends his days zipping from one parallel universe to the next killing himself, on the premise that when there is only one Jet Li remaining himself - he will have godlike powers. Of course that all changes when he arrives in (presumably our own) universe to find that the last version of himself is almost as strong as he is and a good guy.
You don't look for script and acting in this so it's probably irrelevant to say that Jason Statham, as multiverse cop assigned to protect good Li, shouldn't really be allowed in front of a camera out of the Lock Stock etc' London setting. Old hand Delroy Lindo plays it straight, and Li is a likeable hero as well as a very accomplished martial artist. The director and action team know what they're doing, and the whole thing is an undemanding and enjoyable romp even if the best action is all in the opening fifteen minutes. The ending is left wide open for a sequel I only hope they call it The One Two.
The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)
One line summary of this film? I can't do that.
Once again director Wes Anderson and co-writer Owen Wilson have assembled a cast of slightly left-of-centre characters and turned out a brilliant ensemble piece. Like the same team's earlier Rushmore, the whole thing has a feel that you can't quite put your finger on but which sets it apart from just about everything else today. Rushmore improves on every viewing, and I suspect this will too. I am writing this a couple of days after first viewing and I can't wait to see it again.
The cast in this story of a family at war with itself, from leads to smaller parts, is uniformly excellent but if I had to pick one out it would be Gwyneth Paltrow I'm not normally a fan of hers but in this I found her almost totally unrecognisable. The soundtrack too, mainly 60s and 70s hits, is once again a standout whereas lesser film makers seem to throw any old hit onto a soundtrack and hope it fits, Anderson gets the perfect one every time. Unique and unmissable.
The Mothman Prophecies (2002)
Reviewer prophesies gloomy future ahead.
Occasionally slightly spooky, but let down by pacing that a dying snail would leave for dead. Gere as a reporter in transit inexplicably finds himself in a backwoods town, where worried inhabitants seem to be suffering from the same visions experienced by Gere's dead wife shortly after a car accident that eventually claimed her life.
The nature of Mothman' is never satisfactorily outlined, and a note on the closing credits to the effect that the events just portrayed have never been explained merely looks like a cop-out. The cast do well with the material at hand and the whole thing has a decent gloomy and doom-ridden feel to it, but by the end you won't really care what comes next. In fact, if you're still awake at the 90 minute mark, give yourself a pat on the back.
Don't Say a Word (2001)
Here we go again
Standard, by-the-numbers big star suspense thriller. Douglas's daughter is held by Sean Bean's gang of very bad men, on threat of instant death if head-doctor daddy can't prise a number from the head of basket-case prisoner Brittany Murphy by teatime.
In any Hollywood big-star family man suspense thriller, the suspense is always dissipated by knowing exactly how it's going to end up. This one pushes all the buttons you can reasonably expect it to under these restraints, but there's not really anything here to distinguish it from all the others in this genre.
Shallow Hal (2001)
Farrellys go soft?
Approach this expecting a romance and you'll be less disappointed than if you expect a comedy. The gleeful bad taste of earlier Farrelly epics has completely disappeared; despite the story there's nothing here that has the remotest chance of offending anybody. It's simply the story of a man who learns not to judge people by their appearance. You know where it's going from the start, but it must be said it is quite entertaining even if not particularly funny, and woefully predictable. The cast perform well with what they have Jack Black is likeable even before his transformation, Jason Alexander reprises his Seinfeld obnoxious sidekick' role yet again, and Gwyneth Paltrow is an agreeable love interest. That said, the point would have been better made if an overweight, physically unattractive actress had been cast in the entire role there really wasn't any need for the Paltrow incarnation to be in the film. Apart from box office receipts of course.