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cryinghyena
Reviews
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004)
my favorite of the Potter films
So there Chris Columbus.
I think the Potter films are an entirely different experience for the people who have read the books and those who haven't. I've read them and was somewhat dissappointed by the first two films, and I'll tell you why. I think the movies were great in all the areas where Hollywood is traditionally really good, particularly visually. The movies looked great and it was obvious that a lot of people spent a lot of time creating every little detail that went on film. Where they suffered was the story, in the same way book to film translations always tend to suffer: they try to pack too much story into them... and be "too" faithful. In doing so they lose the "feel" of the original book. The first two Potter films really lacked the (for lack of a better word) magic that the books exuded from every page. Every scene seemed rushed to me because they had to keep the story moving at all times... and I never felt like the movies had a good pace to them, they just sprinted to get all the story across in the two hours they had to tell it.
J.K. Rowling has a writing style that is clever and stylish and fits the world she has created perfectly... and on film that style just doesn't come through at all. To me that writing style is just as important to the story as any of the characters themselves.
So that's why I was expecting more of the same for Potter # 3, but I was actually pleasantly surprised. While I don't think the movie necessarily captures Rowling's style, it at least has it's own style... I got a definite sense of pacing and something else that may sound strange... a sense of geography. By that I mean that I felt like in any given scene I knew where the characters were in relation to previous scenes... like Hogwarts was actually a physical place and not simply a bunch of unrelated sets. ( Can't say the same for # 1 or # 2) They really did a good job of keeping the crux of what I know was a long story (each successive book gets longer) together, and although many of the characters are still relatively one dimensional, for some reason it didn't bother me as much as in the previous films.
I've heard some people say that this was the "darkest" of the Potter movies, but I didn't feel that way at all... I bet if you watched all three back to back they'd be pretty similar. Visually I really think this film is superior to the previous two... from the art direction all the way down to the creature design. There were MANY shots where I really took note of how beautiful a shot they had arranged... and I have to say that John Williams' score complimented it well.
The film didn't strike me as too scary or intense for children, certainly no more or less than the previous films. (I think the next films are going to be very interesting, since the books become more and more adult in nature as they go along... I'm curious to see how they'll handle that.)
Unlike the previous two films where I caught myself checking my watch and massaging my sore butt... I got into this film and found myself laughing a few times at some of the clever gags which, while not absent from the first two films, were simply done better in this film.
So... overall, my longwinded rambling review gives # 3 an 8 out of 10. Kudos to the new Potter director, hopefully you'll keep Columbus strictly as a producer from here on out.
A Day Without a Mexican (2004)
don't expect too much
This film got it's press from the "inflammatory" title, but the ad campaign was aimed to put your butt in the movie seat, and it worked for this micro-budget movie... it ended up with a profit in Los Angeles alone. This was quite clever because the film got a much larger audience than it would have received otherwise, regardless of anyone's personal feelings. The ads were done so that any reasonably intelligent person could see the tongue-in-cheek manner in which the ad campaign was carried out, and those who couldn't, well... they'd probably go see the movie just so they could be even more angry.
So I went to see the movie, not so much because of the controversy, but to see how good a film had been put together. I was really disappointed. For as clever a campaign had been crafted to get people to see their movie, the filmmakers failed miserably at keeping them interested.
The storyline is not too terribly involving, and the "morality tale" message is really beat into your head with a hammer from the first minute all the way to the end. The acting is amateurish... it had a very distinct high school film project look and feel to it, and although I'm no stranger to low budget films... this one really looked bad. The film quality was so terribly grainy that it was distracting, and the attempts at "visual effects" even moreso. I would have been more impressed and they would have saved a few bucks if they'd left them out.
The coup d'etat... I fell asleep. And I had really wanted to like this movie... I went in having a really good feeling about it.
The film would probably have made a great half hour after school special or educational video, with all of the boring and tedious plot left out and all of the interesting factoids about the Mexican contribution to American culture left in. I know many of my Mexican friends who saw it got a kick out of some of the cultural in-jokes in the movie, but almost across the board they agree with me that the movie wasn't very good.
So there you go. If you have a burning desire to learn some fairly obvious facts about Mexican culture in California, jump right in. My feeling is that people who are ignorant to the information put forward in the film are probably not inclined to care or want to know anyway... but there's never any harm in trying to get the word out. All minorities in the U.S. have historically been mistreated and maligned, and if one were really inclined to learn some perspective about American treatment of Mexicans, Indians, Blacks, Asians... I would suggest a read of 'A People's History of the United States' by Howard Zinn. NOW THAT'S AN EYE OPENER.
Cabin Fever (2002)
Absolutely Horrible
Utterly unwatchable, totally mediocre and just insultingly bad. I wish a career of carwashing and tablewaiting on every person involved in the making of this "film"... an hour and a half of my life STOLEN from me.
If you want a bad horror movie filled with gore and camp laughs... go with Peter Jackson's schlocky bloodfest 'Dead Alive'... eminently more entertaining than this drek.
Pancakes? Pancakes!!!?? To be honest, I'd been warned about this movie and someone described the "pancakes" scene beforehand... but their description absolutely defied logic so I had to see it myself to make sure my pal hadn't been on an acid trip at the time. Much to my chagrin, he wasn't.
Eli Roth, while this movie may amuse you and your friends, you are a terrible filmmaker. I don't say this to be mean spirited, rather I consider it constructive criticism to someone who obviously hadn't been given any of that by anyone else. How did this crap slip through a major motion picture studio?!!!
Plot holes you could drive a Hummer through, annoyingly overwrought and stereotypical characters, just bad, bad, BAD! Movies like this make me angry because somewhere out there is a deserving filmmaker who can't get his worthwhile project off the ground while "Cabin Fever" gets greenlit.
The only advice I ever plan to give my children when they grow up is this: 1. Don't do drugs. and 2. Steer clear of 'Cabin Fever'.
Ocean's Eleven (2001)
Very well done!
I went in to this movie prepared to hate it, but hoping for the best. Being a huge Sinatra fan, I am probably one of the few people who really enjoyed the original, and not simply for camp.
And to be blunt... I just can't stand Julia Roberts. In my humble opinion she is just about as overrated as an actor can be.
But, this film was just plain great. Entertaining all around... funny, but not overly so... this film seemed very tight to me in it's weaving the story in a way that gives the big ensemble cast their own chances to develop their characters on screen without hurting the plot advancement. There are a bunch of "techno-heist" films out now... and I'll put Ocean's against any of them. While not entirely unpredictable, I was having such a good time throughout the whole film that I just didn't care. Terrific use of music to propel you through the story and provide a sense of pacing... just one of the many things I noticed about the movie.
My girlfriend even liked it, which brings the number of films we agree upon to 4... (should I be surprised that 3 of these films star Brad Pitt, I wonder?)
As for Julia... mercifully her role limited her to be the eye candy and not the Erin Brokovich, which I think she does much more convincingly.
I know it will never reap any real critical recognition, but for sure it has a spot on my dvd rack where it will see repeated use.
In my humble opinion.... probably the best remake ever. I really love well crafted movies... it takes so much work to make a feature length film, and to see one that is so well made all around is such a breath of fresh air.
Memento (2000)
Remarkable and thought-provoking
A think Memento is either a love it or hate it film.... I LOVED IT. If you blink or go to the bathroom during this film you will return and be completely lost, but it is taut... intense, and has more twists than a Cirque-de-Soleil contortionist.
Ultimately, it left me thinking in a very profound and philosophical way about the nature of human memory. Set against the backdrop of a modern day noir detective reverse-whodunnit... an incredibly difficult film to describe without giving too much information away.
Guy Pearce is EXCELLENT... terrific in basically a one man show. Supporting cast fills all the gaps, and the film is just superbly written. Editing this film must have been a Herculean task. A+
Moulin Rouge! (2001)
voice of dissent
I'm sure everyone else loved this movie...
But I didn't.
It certainly isn't as bad as some things I've seen, but after hearing such high praise for this film I was expecting MUCH, MUCH MORE.
I knew the film was a musical, however I didn't know that all the music was lifted from other musicals/musicians and then sung karaoke style. I was not impressed and couldn't help but groan when they began to sing Nirvana's 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' as a dance number. It's like taking the lyrics of 'Rage Against the Machine' and putting them in a Hansen video... the two just don't fit together, and taking the music out of it's context like that completely negates what the original artist intended. (a la Disney's sanitizing of Victor Hugo's political satire 'The Hunchback of Notre Dame.')
Aside from the music, my only other complaint was the BLAH message the film repeated OVER and OVER and OVER again by Ewan McGregor. Love is good, Love is Great, Life is Love, We all need Love, Life is meaningless without Love.... etc. etc. etc...
I kept expecting the film to get a little deeper, or at least try to explain why love is good... but it didn't. If you want a great love story, there are a whole bunch out there that are much better than this film.
That said, the supporting cast were entertaining... and the overall look of the film is definitely impressive if not surreal.
Overall, costumes, choreography and art direction are to be commended, writing and direction are not. Methinks it gets a marginal 5.
Teenage Caveman (2002)
worst film ever made
Where to begin? This headliner at the Fecal Film Festival is without a doubt the worst thing I have ever seen. Entirely without any redeeming value whatsoever, not even camp value mind you... this film lacks any substantive plot or story line that is discernable, nor comprehendable dialogue, nor even interest as a soft core porno.
Larry Clark's disturbing debut 'Kids' was controversial for it's depiction of homeless children doing drugs and having sex on the streets of New York. Well, after seeing Teenage Caveman you begin to realize that that subject matter is a favorite of Clark's and he is less gritty filmmaker than closet pedophile.
The film even looks bad... not even visually interesting, this film was an hour and a half of my life STOLEN from me. I don't know what the budget of this cinematic excrement was, but if it was more than $500, the production designer should be arrested for theft. The film appears to be shot entirely inside a closet, with the exception of two or three minutes of exteriors with the appearance that they were filmed in vacant lots and the homeless people who live there were displaced until filming was complete.
I LIKE BAD MOVIES... Ed Wood films are very entertaining to me, because I can take enjoyment in what was going on behind the scenes and the real "camp" laughs. This film can't even boast that. It is BORING. Entirely forgettable... I had to write this review quickly before this 'piece de merde' slipped from my mind.
I think Clark was trying to make some kind of statement about the nature of organized religion, maybe about drug use, something about sexual discovery... but if anyone can figure out what the hell the message was... post it because it was way too subtle for me to pick up on.
About the sex... like everything in else in this Ishtar-wanna-be, it was bad. Clark picked "actors" who were not only unable to deliver any dialogue, but who were just plain unattractive. People who I can't imagine anyone wanting to see naked, even after twenty beers. Particularly of note as being an exceptionally bad actress is the Asian girl who set new records for a lack of screen presence. Even the sexually explicit dialogue she delivers is done so poorly that it would make the most sexually repressed pre-teenage boy yawn. (The only dialogue that I can remember now involves a young boy learning to read from Penthouse forum, and stumbling over "reaming out my wife's bunghole.") I hope whoever wrote the script is proud. I'm embarrassed for repeating it.
In fact... everyone involved with this drek should be ashamed. A film school excercise should be to take the footage from this steaming peanut loaf and put together anything that makes sense. Anyone who succeeds should get a masters.
Perhaps the sci-fi geeks who "must" see anything with a special effect in it may want to sit through this Clockwork-Orange-torture-film, but even the effects are bad. If viewed for it's technical merits, the Computer Generated effects appear to have been done on someone's laptop while riding aboard a shaky bus. The makeup on the bad-guy creature is laughably bad, but not enough so to be entertaining.
Take my advice and steer clear of 'Teenage Caveman.' As a parent, I would rather have my son or daughter watch a snuff film... at least they might learn something from it. THIS IS THE FIRST FILM I HAVE EVER SEEN TO HAVE NO REDEEMING VALUE WHATSOEVER.