dixonbainbridgeisaledge Reviews

500 MPH Storm (2013)

A masterpiece

[9/10 · 7 January 2015]

This film came as a very pleasant surprise. Thoroughly plausible storyline and enthusiastic actors and special effects guys who were doing the best they can with windows movie maker.

It begins with a lovely day of people floating around in their hot air balloons but then peril soon becomes disaster!! Some science bods and some military guys were making an attempt at some super laser beam renewable energy which was badly designed and caused storms which caused more laser which caused more storms... There was a kid in the film and he was supposed to be about 16 but clearly acted by someone about 25. This kid said "they just exploded!" talking about people caught up in this tornado. I had to take the film back and it was just some hot air balloons caught up in a tornado, and no sign of anyone exploding at all. Some people were trying to make some renewable energy thing but instead it made storms and tornadoes and hurricanes and stuff and they kept growing and somehow this doofus guy managed to save the world somehow by doing something.

10/10

Confessions of an Eco-Terrorist (2010)

Could have been good but for egotistical film maker

[3/10 · 8 April 2013]

This film is about Sea Shepherd's efforts to stop whaling and other nautical animal abuse around the world, told by the ex-Sea Shepherd member Peter Brown. Unfortunately for the cause, Brown presents this film in a very egotistical way, and there's more of an emphasis on personal reputation enhancement than actually focusing on the problems at hand.

As a vegan and, more or less, a supporter of Sea Shepherd, I believe this film really wasted the opportunity to expose the animal abuse in a serious way to a wider audience. Some of the narration and music really trivialised a very serious issue. All in all, there is good information in the film, if you can break through the sugar and superficiality.

3/10

Sinister (I) (2012)

Strange how a film can surprise!

[7/10 · 9 September 2012]

Sinister follows the character of Ellison (Ethan Hawke), a true-crime novelist who purchases a new home with the hopes of writing a successful book. After moving into his new home, he discovers a box of old home movies that depict previous families who lived in the house, as well as their murders. As Ellison looks further into the mystery behind the tapes, he discovers that the murders all have ties to a supernatural entity known only as "Bagul". Bagul exists in images of himself and runs the risk of making Ellison's family the latest casualty of the house.

Director Scott Derrickson cleverly used a variety of different camera angles on several key occasions in the film to express the fear and shock of the victims, and the use of sound to depict this was done in a horrifying way. As in many films, actors were used to portray the characters. Ethan Hawke, Juliet Rylance and Clare Foley acted out the most prominent characters in the film. The camera was operated by George Bianchini, in his usual unpredictable manner. Overall I thought the film will pretty much do what it wants to do: make plenty of money. And if people get entertained in the mean time, all the power to them. I thought it was one of the scariest films I had seen this year, and I like being scared so for me this was good.

The Tree of Life (2011)

Indulgent, meaningless, boring, irritating.

[1/10 · 7 October 2011]

This film told a very simple story of an angry and slightly abusive father (Brad Pitt) and his wife (Jessica Chastain) and three children, one of whom we see in later life played by Sean Penn. This, however, would have been a five minute segment of any other film, but this was spun into 138 minutes by the inclusion of seemingly random and endless unconnected clips to other things, for example, sperm swimming around, planets, dinosaurs, nature and CGI of... well... who knows?

Sean Penn, one of the major reasons I watched this film, is named second in the credits and yet he appears in the film for less than five minutes. There was lots of beautiful cinematography of nature and other interesting things, but it was all scrambled together with inappropriate music, intertwined with a story that had no link to the images.

How this film scores 7.5 I really have no idea. One of the worst directed, most badly thought out, most indulgent and most irritating films that I have ever seen. This is the cinematic version of chat roulette.

1/10

Antichrist (2009)

Wait and the laughs will come... but this is an awful film.

[1/10 · 24 December 2009]

I have honestly never laughed so uncontrollably at a movie ever I think and I really didn't think I would say this about this movie. This movie amused in a way that no genuine comedy film ever could. This is everything that's wrong with movies today all wrapped up in a single film.

From the very first minute you could tell that the director, Lars Von Trier, is so desperately fond of his own work that there were numerous long drawn out shots in black and white from strange angles and many really crazy cuts from scene to scene. The film was introduced with a really long black and white sex scene in super-slow-mo to Italian opera music. It's as pretentious as it gets. My friends and I were looking at each other in disbelief at the amount of slow motion used in this film.

There were many scenes where you thought "What's the relevance of this? I'll probably find out later." Well, in this film you never do. So much of the film is done in slow motion and time feels like it's hardly moving for most of this film. The dialogue was really painful to listen to and if there had been no conversation in the whole movie it would hardly have made any difference. This film, though, obviously had a reasonable budget, but all the money and effort seems to have been spent on making the film look arty and sophisticated but this film lacked the basics: a decent story and decent dialogue.

The two leading actors, Willem Defoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg, did a reasonable job with the terrible dialogue they had to wrestle with, along with the numerous graphic, gratuitous sex scenes and extremely graphic violence. Both of these features being very overused in order to sell what is an awful film. It was just to make the less discerning viewer, who doesn't interest him/her self much with the story, happy. However everything happened at such a painfully slow pace I can't imagine anyone being pleased with this. Some people just want to watch sex and violence. Well I wouldn't waste your time here then because you can find both much better elsewhere! However, with all the terrible dialogue, the painfully slow pace, the regular black and white super-slow-mo sex scenes, the super-slow-mo of someone walking on a bridge, the laughable scene with the crow (won't spoil it for you) etc etc, I actually just cracked and laughed so uncontrollably I cried for several minutes. The irony of so much effort going into this film's style to cover up how terrible it was, by a director who thinks so highly of himself and actually making a complete fool of himself with this skid-mark of a movie.

My suggestion to you would be that if you want to see this movie, watch at speed x2. It will still be a slow movie and you won't miss much about the dialogue. There isn't much of it and what little there is is complete rubbish. You will however save about 52 minutes of your life. Just looking at the IMDb statistics I can't believe that the film was only 104 minutes long. It honestly felt like about 3 hours.

Antichrist is a very slow, very boring, very pretentious and an utterly pointless movie.

Ninja Dragon (1986)

So rubbish it's hilarious

[5/10 · 23 July 2007]

I don't know if this film was supposed to be hilarious, but it's certainly succeeded in being so. It's a poor martial arts film. Badly dubbed (sometimes English badly dubbed over in English!), awfully acted, rubbish storyline, gratuitous nudity, generally really dumb and clichéd, and it's the combination of all these things that makes the film an absolute classic. The lead actor, Richard Harrison, is far too old to be able to do the stunts that his character is doing, so in the fight scenes he's completely covered from head to toe! A masterstroke! I love the way one of the Chinese girls is called Fanny as well. Her name is said over and over as well. Highly amusing.

If they had tried to make this funny they wouldn't have been able to, due to the complete lack of talent in the team. This is a perfect so-crap-it's-funny movie, that could be enjoyed by anyone who likes to laugh at something rather than with something.

7/10 for reasons of enjoyment. 0/10 for quality (in other words - I could have done just as good myself!).

Earthlings (2005)

At last the horrors of our animal industries are revealed

[10/10 · 27 May 2006]

This is such a brilliant piece of work from Shaun Monson and Joaquin Phoenix. Using undercover footage, the film shows what the animals go through to give us the products that the human race uses every day.

The average Joe eats meat, but wouldn't kill an animal himself. He tries his best not to think about how it went from a living breathing pig or cow, to a rasher of bacon or a steak. Many people get through their whole lives protected from the horrible truth. As Phoenix said in the film "If slaughterhouses had glass walls, we would all be vegetarians." Well, this documentary shows what's going on behind those walls. This film is not just about animals used for the food industry, but also shines the light on - among others - the fur industry, animal circuses and animal experimentation.

By avoiding overly emotive language the film has a tremendous impact and the biggest shame is that not more people have seen it - or even heard of it. Please watch this film, and tell others about it. It gives an incite into the things we take for granted.

You don't have to buy it - it's free to watch on google.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1282796533661048967

Watch it all. Take an hour and a bit out of your life for this movie - it will change it. I have been vegan ever since watching this movie.

I Am Sam (2001)

One of the best acting performances of all time

[9/10 · 23 February 2005]

A thoroughly entertaining film that is very touching and moving. It is well directed, produced and flows smoothly at a good pace throughout. The amazing thing, however, is the performance by Sean Penn. It is the best acting performance I have ever seen, and I'd love for someone to show me a better one.

By the time I'd got to the end of the film I had absolutely forgotten that Sean Penn was an able-bodied man. It was truly remarkably. Michelle Pfeiffer played her part as a hard-nosed, money-oriented lawyer also very well, and Dakota Fanning, playing Sam's daughter, shows remarkable ability for an actress of her age. A wonderful performance. She may well be winning Oscars for herself in the future, judged on this.

It was a fairly unfashionable film in Hollywood and it didn't have quite the glamour or the budget of other films, and certainly didn't have as much publicity as many others. As a result of this, it didn't get the recognition it deserved as a film. However, Sean Penn was nominated for an Oscar for it, but he was beaten by Denzel Washington for his part in Training Day which I find, frankly, incredible.

This is why I was so pleased to see Sean Penn win the Oscar in 2004 for his role in Mystic River, even though I believe his role as Sam in this film was much more challenging and therefore so much more of a triumph. Anyway, you must watch it and you will be mesmerised and astonished by the genius that is Sean Penn.

Going Overboard (1989)

This is the worst, and the least funny, film I have ever seen! Seriously!

[1/10 · 22 February 2005]

This is a horror film to anyone that likes good films.

This film is simply awful. You really should check it out just purely to SEE HOW BAD A FILM CAN BE before complaining about the next one. The comedy is so painful and ridiculous, the story is either non-existent or ludicrous. It's jokes are less funny than you losing the winning lottery ticket, or running over your own grandmother.

This film would make a good torture tool. I don't know many people who could sit through it without cracking (and I don't mean laughing, no danger of that!)

There was warning from the very start with the absurd and unfunny animated face-pulling. It all went tragically downhill from there.

You might think, as I did before I saw it, that if its THIS BAD it would be funny. This movie is even worse than this. If that were the case then it would be fine, but it's not. As I say, watch as much of it as you can anyway!

Luckily I didn't spend any money on it, it came in one of those massive free packs of DVDs with about 50 rubbish films in, this being the worst of them all.

I would rather eat my own faeses washed down with a nice tall glass of urine than to watch another second of this DVD again!

Is there a stronger word than abysmal?

The Green Mile (1999)

Green Miles and miles and .....

[3/10 · 22 February 2005]

How far will elastic stretch? They managed to stretch this elastic band right the way round the moon. I believe the story could have been told in about an hour without losing any of the story at all, and that's being generous. I am one of those believers in the 90 minute film, but I appreciate that if the story merits it, more time may be necessary. In this case, there is absolutely no excuse. The story barely qualifies as enough for a film at all, let alone an event-less epic-length film.

The overall story was weak and the film makers desperation to put in emotion was done in an over-dramatic way with little content and had no effect on me at all, except to genuinely annoy me. I found it to be insulting to watch, to be honest, and was the most boring, most frustrating film I have ever seen.

I also felt the ending was obvious for the whole of the last hour. It won't ruin the story to know that there was a piece following a mouse around for about 20 minutes which added little or nothing to the story. I kept watching and watching and watching hoping for something exciting to happen but it never did. I was preying for the film to end for the last 30-45 minutes. I was elated when I finally saw the credits.

If I was told I had to watch either this awful film of 3 hours plus, or the worst film I have ever seen, Going Overboard, if my life depended on it, I would chose the latter. At least the suffering would be over so much sooner! I have seen plenty of films where the acting was worse and where so many other aspects of film were worse, but never have I seen a film so unnecessarily long and, with it, boring.

Probably the most overrated film of all time...