sunsing Reviews

Champion (2002)

I feel I finally know about Kim

[10/10 · 29 July 2008]

I was watching the boxing match that this film depicts in 1982, when I saw Kim take the blows that would lead to his death on live TV. I believe that Howard Kossel may have been commenting on the fight at the time, and I understood from his statements, that a tragedy had just occurred. I knew in my heart that I had just seen a man killed in the ring... he was unknown to me at the time, all I knew was that he was South Korean... I have always wondered about Kim, and who he was.

I was very pleased to see that someone had finally told Kim's story, and I was truly touched by this film, and felt that I had gotten to know, in some way, something about the man that I had watched die performing a sport that I still enjoy to this day. Bravo!!! I can finally put a face to the name.

Munich (2005)

It's a remake!!!

[2 December 2007]

How many times do we have to remake a film before someone cries foul, and the Hollywood establishment has to start coming up with original ideas...

Spielberg's "Munich" offers some slightly different, more emotional viewpoints than the 1986 made for TV movie "Sword of Gideon"... And while historical TV footage is artfully inter-cut, to perhaps integrate the story to better effect. But, Munich is almost entirely, shot for shot, the same film...

Each scene is unabashedly laid out, almost exactly as "Sword of Gideon". Even details, like the scene where the assassins bullets go through the grocery bag and spill the milk is the same... It's as though Spielberg used "Sword of Gideon" as his personal storyboard...

I am very tired of seeing remakes of films which have already been done well... How many times do we have to see the same movie under the guise of a different name? And why do we have to see a talented director like Spielberg express the same idea virtually the same way, all the while pretending that the execution was his original expression?

While updating a film , maybe once, to bring it to a new and wider audience, may be acceptable... At least do it with some originality... Cookie cutters are for making cookies, not movies...

Hollywood seems to be on a bandwagon of churning out remake after remake. As well as every comic book or "graphic novel" that has ever existed...

Is this what a majority of movies have been reduced to? Retreads, comic books, and franchise serial films???

My sensibilities are being assaulted and underestimated by studios, directors and producers who have decided that this level of pablum is all that the modern moviegoer can digest... No wonder box office sales have been limp of late...

Aren't there any more original ideas to be expressed? Have directors and writers just stopped reading books? There are a wealth of great stories out there...

Someone in should invent a new job for a production assistant in movie-making. Someone whose job it is to read books and to bring the new stories to the attention of the overburdened film industry...