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doctorben
Reviews
Don't Say a Word (2001)
Average thriller, I was hoping for more
Psychiatrist Nathan Conrad (Michael Douglas) wakes to a parents worst nightmare, his daughter, Jessie (Skye McCole Bartusiak) has been kidnapped. The kidnappers want the seemingly impossible. Nathan must delve into the broken mind of psychiatric patient Elisabeth (Brittany Murphy) and convince her to reveal a six digit number that will lead the kidnappers to a very valuable red diamond. Sound interesting? Sure it does. Unfortunately it only turns out to be average. Going into this I thought there would be much more psychiatry going on. I thought the movie would be about the unraveling of Elisabeth's problems and the revelation of this number. Too bad for me, it fell into normal thriller routine involving guns and chasing ... yawn. It's never a good sign when you get to the last half hour and wish things would just hurry up so you can go home. Don't Say a Word was not a bad movie per say. The acting was good, the dialogue was decent, the action scenes were well shot if not inventive. It's just that this movie didn't go anywhere a million others haven't already been. It looked like from the trailer that it might but the writers just pulled a big 'fooled you' on the audience. A few things bothered me about this movie but they really just come from the formula that this movie used. Why at the end of a movie like this does the good guy always have the chance to kill the bad guy and then let him go so he can have one last chance to kill the good guy only to be accidentally killed by some inanimate thing? Just once I'd like to see the good guy cap the baddie when he has the chance (yes I know they did it in Seven but that doesn't really compare). What's that you say? That would make him no better than the bad guy? Maybe, but its self defense, it's way different. And where did Oliver Platt go? Halfway through the movie he just disappears. I really like that guys and it was disappointing to his story line just end like that, lazy writers! Or just forgetful, Didn't I have more characters when I started this script? Oh well I'll just finish with what I've got, no one will notice.' To wrap things up, this isn't a bad little movie just very formulaic and in the end not very interesting. 5 lab coats out of 10.
Jeepers Creepers (2001)
Surprisingly scary little flick
Okay so I admit, I am a movie addict. My family is seriously thinking of holding and intervention for me. So I see every movie that comes out, what's so wrong with that? Everyone needs a hobby ... right? Okay well the point that I am trying to make is that I've seen so many movies that I really thought I was desensitized to movie scariness. I thought nothing could scare me anymore. I was wrong. Jeepers Creepers actually had me closing my eyes in scenes. I haven't done that since I was six years old! Jeepers Creepers starts out innocently enough. Darry (Justin Long) and his sister Trish (Gina Philips) are driving home from college for spring break. They are terrorized on the road by a big, nasty old truck it eventually passes them by and they continue the trek home. They later see the same truck parked outside an old church and its driver dumping what appear to be bloody bodies down a pipe in the yard. They of course have to investigate and the real scariness begins. Now I'm not going to give away anymore than that because I don't want to ruin any of the scares for you. Up to this point I was counting and timing the scares. 'There was the fake scare... now here comes the real one in 3...2...1, right on schedule, next please', It was all pretty routine. It wasn't long though until I realized that I wa s actually a little scared. It all snowballed from there. Before I knew it I was actually looking away from the screen, considering going for a refill on my drink and asking myself if I really liked being scared by a movie after all, why didn't I pick a harmless little comedy to see? The thing was that it wasn't like most movies where the scares pop up every now and then, it had this pervading sense of dread. I was tense and even afraid for a good 45 minutes. Things got a little less scary towards the end but still...it was almost a relief.
Now don't get me wrong this is obviously not an academy award winning movie, but it was very effective. The acting is solid, the dialogue descent and the effects pull things off. What I really liked about Jeepers Creepers was that it did what it set out to do, scare the pants off me. I also have to give kudos to the script for not falling completely into horror movie routine and sticking to it's guns on some rarely seen plot points. You'll know them when you see them. It was also nice to see the leads as a brother sister team, you don't see that so much, it kept the story from falling into the tired and useless sexual tension or flat out sex scenes. I'm going to go off on a tangent here for just a second so bear with me. What is it with moviemakers thinking that every movie needs to have a sex scene. Does every human activity really lead to sex? 'We are being chased by a man / monster who wants nothing more than to kill us, lets stop off at this motel for a quick s**g and then be on our way'. Honestly, it's useless. Okay sorry about that, back to Jeepers Creepers, which had no sex if you were wondering. So to wrap things up, if you want to be scared, go see this movie, it'll be worth your money. I'll never be able to hear the song Jeepers Creepers again (not that I heard it much before this movie but you get the idea) without a little chill running up my spine.
Hard Ball (2001)
An average movie, nothing spectacular.
Hardball is about a group of boys from the Chicago projects who play on what we must assume is the worst team in Little League. Until, of course, down and out Conor O'Neill (Keanu Reeves) is cornered into coaching the team in return for a loan from a friend to pay off his gambling debts. Elizabeth Wilkes (Diane Lane), the boys' teacher, is also along for part of the ride.
I apologize up front for the lazy synopsis I just gave but for a movie as generic and average as this I just couldn't spend the brain energy on making it anymore exciting than that. Now don't get me wrong this wasn't really a bad movie, it just wasn't a really good movie either. This movie seems to have a hard time figuring out what it is about. Is it about Conor's gambling problem and his attempts to not get killed for his bad debts? Or is it about a Little League team and a coach who learn to care for each other and rely on each other? Or is it about Conor and Elizabeth and their relationship? If you picked any of these answers you are wrong. It's about none of them. Oh it dabbles in all of them but doesn't really take any of them far enough to say it is actually about them. The movie seems to dip in and out of the different story lines without really advancing them or resolving anything. Take the boys and the little league team for example. They start of as the worst team on the league. By game two they are kicking butts and taking numbers. When did they learn all these skills. Were they just pretending to be so bad to lure the other teams into a false sense of security? We don't get to see Conor (Keanu) really doing any coaching or forming any bonds with the boys on the team, yet we are supposed to believe that these things happened. One boy finds out he can't play for the team because of his age and runs off to join a gang. What happens to him, not important apparently and Conor seems like he doesn't care either. And the gambling thing? Resolved halfway through and it just goes away. We don't see him making any of these amends, we are supposed to accept that it has happened. Plot holes galore, things not resolved, blech! Lazy writing I say. Now the story wasn't all bad, it was redeemed a little by the last 10 minutes, but it wasn't enough to pull this out of the average category.
Now lets talk a little about the actors. I like Keanu Reeves, really I do. It's just that he needs very specific roles. If you need someone to look lost and confused and not much else, Keanu is your man. I though he was perfect for The Matrix. Really though people, as much as some of you Keanu fans want to believe it, the man can't act. That's all there is to it. It's not like he's reading his lines off a queue card or anything like some 'actors' (i.e. pretty boy Justin Chambers of The Musketeer) he's just a little robotic. It's not a good show of your acting chops when you are outdone by a group of 10 year olds. I thought all the kids in this movie were pretty good, they were likable and they had me laughing (in the good way) a few times.
Overall this movie was not horrible and if you are deciding between this and The Musketeer (now there was a real crapper but you can go read my review for that and find out what I really thought), Hardball should win hands down. It's just that there are some better movies out there right now you should be putting your money down to see.
The Musketeer (2001)
What corporate goon read this script and thought it was any good.
I'm sure everyone knows the basics of the musketeer story so I'll only give you a quick synopsis here. The long and short of it is 1700's France, D'Artagnan's(Justin Chambers ) father is killed by Febre (Tim Roth), D'Artagnan vows to grow up and become a Musketeer, elite body guards of the King, just like his father. He grows up, becomes a kick butt swordsman, and sets out to join the Musketeers only to find they have been disbanded by the not so religious Cardinal Richeleu who plots to deface the king in order to seize the throne. Still with me? Good. D'Artagnan joins up with Musketeers Athos (Jan Gregor Kremp), and Porthos (Steven Spiers) to save the day. Weren't there three musketeers you ask? I thought so too but since the two that are in this movie are completely wasted why bother having the third. Now that the niceties are out of the way, down to business. This movie sucked. It sucked so much it was almost a made for T.V. movie. The opening was a little hokey but in a movie like this I expected it. What I didn't expect was to see the best bits of the movie in the trailer. Moving forward from the opening is the title credits. Now in this day and age of computer magic people can make some pretty spectacular things on the big screen. I would have settled for a guy standing there with handwritten credits on poster board. The titles looked like they were ripped from some 80's B.B.C. special. Sadly it was all down hill from there. Who ever thought that pretty boy model Justin Chambers was an actor? Boy did you make a mistake. The guy basically read the script from queue cards and put no 'acting' into it. Mina Suvari is almost no better. There was absolutely no chemistry between them. All the dialogue in this movie is horrible. The action scenes touted so highly in the trailer (the main reason I wanted to see this movie) were dark, to close and horribly blurry. I couldn't tell what was going on. You always had the impression that something cool was happening but you could never see it. Bad guys who give up way to easily, 'Oh no that coach is at least 10 feet away from me and moving slowly no way am I going to try and run after that', or the best was the 5 second fire on the stone bridge that scared away the pursuing baddies, you'd think they were unionized or something. There are glaring continuity errors, blurry shots and just plan movie badness. One of the worst had to be near the end when someone (No I won't tell you who) takes a bullet to the chest at close range and not only doesn't die but is back in perfect health for the next scene. The real shame of this movie is that real actors like Tim Roth and Catherine Deneuve got roped into it. I mean who let's these movies get made, honestly. What corporate goon read this script and thought it was any good. And who green lighted these actors. Bah! Don't go see this under ANY circumstances, even if someone else is paying.
Just a note, I'm really not a movie ogre. I don't hate everything I see. In fact I can usually find a few things to appreciate in almost every movie, it's just that this movie was soooo bad, I couldn't help but roast it.