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jamestftotani
Reviews
12 Angry Men (1957)
OMG I LOVE THIS FILM SO MUCH! ***K YEAH!!!
I remember watching this movie on one my last lessons in Legal Studies in Australia because there's not much else to do besides the exam prep. I don't understand the appeal of this movie at all. All it is revolves around twelve angry men yelling at each other for the entire movie, in one room. Sure, it tells the story (and I'm seriously stretching the term for this particular live action reel) of a jury made up of 12 men as they deliberate the guilt or acquittal of a defendant on the basis of reasonable doubt, forcing the jurors to question their morals and values. This works well as a play and I like the acting and dialogue in this, but does not translate well onto movie at all. That's what Parliament Question Time TV show is there for. This movie is so boring, forgettable and torturous that this is the third time I literally fell asleep a half hour in besides Transformers: Age of Extinction and the new version of Independence Day. Because movies are meant to entertain people, even Tommy Wisseau's The Room and the animated Titanic movies are watchable compared to this torture device. This movie is generally studied in English (lucky I never had to do that, even though there was no way I could escape seeing this movie), and I feel for the high school students who have to watch this for study, and fans of this movie who would throw their money at everything they see.
The Star (2017)
Definitely not the Emoji Movie
After seeing The Star, I was not at all surprised with the typical production values of Sony Pictures Animation. Yeah its a pretty good follow up from the world's longest and most abysmal and unnecessary phone advertisement from earlier this year (You know what I'm talking about), but its still not a good film. We have a small donkey named Bo who yearns for a life beyond his daily grind at the village mill and one day he finds the courage to break free, and finally goes on the adventure of his dreams. On his journey, he teams up with Ruth, a lovable sheep who has lost her flock and Dave, a dove with lofty aspirations and embarrassing comic relief. Along with three wisecracking camels and some eccentric stable animals whom have no reason to exist except their only redeeming factors are they are voiced by A-list celebrities unlike the rest of the cast, Bo and his new friends, for some reason, become accidental heroes. There's absolutely nothing that stands out about this film because not only is this a story we have heard millions of times, but there are other films that have executed a better job at producing the animal version of The Nativity story such as Disney/Don Bluth's The Small One and the really weird and creepy but charming Rankin & Bass's Nestor The Long Eared Christmas Donkey. The film isn't as effective as it is supposed to be, because Mary & Joseph rely too much on the coincidental cartoonish animal rampages so they can get out of scary situations. The CGI animation is not bad at all, as the human characters look good whenever we have a chance to see them. The animal characters, when they're supposed to behave like the loony tunes, move too stiffly which can be a detriment to when providing comic relief in this movie. To those whom are having their "It's not a Pixar movie so it doesn't have to be good!" rant, I can't really expect Sony to be Disney and Pixar at all because none of their films are as good and charming, well maybe except Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs and Hotel Transylvania (and I really do hope that Popeye turns out fine in the future if they ever get a chance to work on it), but I really do expect Sony to put time and effort into making good animated movies with small budgets, something that Illumination has done a much more sophisticated job of doing this lately. And to those who have their "It's a Christian movie so it doesn't have to be good" rant, I've seen better Christian movies than this. I recommend DreamWorks' Prince of Egypt (although its not a Christmas movie and this was when DreamWorks SKG use to make the best animated movies at the time) although its old, but it still hasn't lost any of its charm and nostalgia yet as I shall continue to wait for a theatrical release of a Christian Christmas movie that will turn out better than most Santa flicks.
--- (9th December 2017) From looking at the likes to dislikes ratio on my review, as of today, 1 out of 7 people found it useful. Now for all the triggered SJWs who rated my comment down (and no I am not sorry for this review and won't change my words and rating!), just because this film has Jesus in it, doesn't mean its automatically a good film. It's like adding Jesus as a comical cameo to an episode of South Park and calling South Park the number 1 best Christian TV show in the world. After producing many bad films in the past, I believe Sony Animation still has a chance to produce good movies if they ever bother to do so in the future.
The King and I (1999)
Nest screws up again in another wannabe Disney flick!
In a time where Disney was experimenting with mature content in their family feature films such as Pocahontas, Hunchback and Mulan, Richard Rich decided to make his second attempt at catching Disney's wind after his 10 year magnum opus The Swan Princess bombed in its theatrical release but sold 50 million copies on VHS. As someone who hasn't seen the original 1956 version of The King and I, I still think that after watching the magically confused Swan Princess, this follow-up by Richard Rich and Rankin/Bass does even not even live up to the mediocrity of The Swan Princess. Although I cannot compare this version to its more superior 50s live-action version, there are still parts of this film that I really hate and cannot stand. The worst part about this film is the mockery of Chinese people through its Asian caricature Master Little. What I can recall from this character is that there's this running gag that he loses his teeth whenever he gets into mischief. After watching Sleeping Beauty, I don't think humming and whistling "I whistle a Happy Tune" would scare off Maleficent's distant cousin but it did anyway, only because the movie is not over yet. This relationship rips off Aladdin in two ways, adding too many cute animal characters such as giving a pet monkey to Anna's son just so he can give Master Little a hard time, the relationship between Chulalonghorn and the slave girl, and an extremely hammy version of Jafar called the Kralahorn, who just performs evil magic tricks using his magic migraines just for the sake of it. Not even the commercial bait song in the credits sung by Barbara Streisand made me think that The King and I would have any chance of stealing my heart. If anyone wants to watch a magical film full of characters with motivations and outside interests, watch Aladdin instead. It even has wonderful humour that can reach out to its audiences as well as having something to do with the story.
A Troll in Central Park (1994)
When an independent animation studio goes full on Corporate!
After All Dogs Go To Heaven was beaten at the box office by a more sophisticated animated film adaption of Hans Christian Anderson's novel, one of the films Don Bluth and his animators worked on was A Troll in Central Park (yeah he worked on Rockadoodle and released it first but that's not my point). He was so passionate about A Troll in Central Park that he threatened to boot out his animators if they refused to have the same enthusiasm as he did. So you know what happened next? They all fled to Disney, the same place Bluth ran away from in bad terms, to work on a more promising project called Beauty and the Beast, a film Don Bluth once considered making. Thank God for Disney. Now lets talk about the sin A Troll in Central Park. The troll characters are so ugly, I know they're meant to be unappealing as characters but they literally put me off eating for a whole day! The child characters are so bad and unlikeable you wonder why their parents haven't sent them off to Pleasure Island yet! Say what you will about the autistic sons from The Unexpected Journey, because believe me I will at some point. At least their behaviour can be excused by the fact that they have autism and eventually there was a way that the mom still has a chance to turn them into mature and decent young adults as they grew. Nice to see Dimitri in the film however, instead of letting the spoilt brat do whatever he wants at the end of the film, he should send him off to a military boot camp run by Major Payne. I have to admit this is also the most pointless film of all time because if the babysitter had bothered to do her job, we would have actually gone straight to the credits. You really have to work HARD to make a character seem creepy. I'm not talking about Gnorga and her trolls, I'm talking about Stanley the happy troll. I like how Don Bluth Entertainment attempted to create an original story about a something/somebody who has trouble trying to get around with societal standards because this could have been the type of film that would resonate with minority groups such as the LGBT community. This leads to the question... Who is this film made for? Young children under the age of 7 would probably fall asleep or not pay attention to the film until they start screaming at Gnorga rocking up at New York's Central Park to turn Dimitri's son into a troll, thumb wrestle Stanley and turn him into stone (I'm not joking, thumb wrestling is the real climax of this film). Those over the age of 7 would hate this film for its cheezy bullshit songs and ridiculous filler that tries to be Fantasia and Dragon's Lair but ends up looking like The Oogieloves Big Balloon Adventure. The morals suck, such as the childish "if you dream, you will succeed in life" and "fuck parents do whatever you want". Those morals could have made anarchic socialist communist Antifa retards blush but because its from this wannabe Fantasia movie, they come off as extremely arrogant. At the end of the film, Stanley turns New York into a mass of greenery which is something evil villains would do in Marvel comics. I swear to God, there are no redeeming factors in this film at all! Not even throwing Dimitri and an Ursula wannabe character named Gnorga can be claimed as redeeming factors. Well I take it back. Maybe the only redeeming factor this film has is it can be used as an alternative to a doorstop.
Sweet Lucifer, watch Beauty and the Beast instead!
La leggenda del Titanic (1999)
Team James Cameron!
The title of the movie should already be a turn off. Its a shame that this idiot from Italy wanted to tell his version of what really happened on the Titanic, and also had the nerve to call the Titanic a "legend". What a disgrace. This movie is so terrible that it already has spoiler alerts but who cares because nobody is interested in this wannabe-Disney garbage. The animation is choppy and there's no major focus on this movie. All we see is talking mice (a marketing opportunity to profit off the deaths of 1000s of people); a romantic couple which has a creepy man who sniffs on gloves and a woman who can talk to mice just because of the magic ju-ju that is caused from crying outside that we'll never ever hear about it again just because... MOVIE; and an evil whale hunter and his henchmen that has magic telecommunications with the sharks which has nothing to do with the ju-ju and crying tears. Just because its "not-fiction" and just because its magic doesn't mean you can make up the rules as you go along! During the climax we just see the sinking of the Titanic, so really there's nothing to build up to this. Oh and I forgot to mention, there's also this giant octopus with a human face which does not appear until shortly before the climax, which is apparently strong enough to throw an iceberg at the Titanic because the octopus was just playing games with the sharks.
Therefore, I condemn the lovey-dovey characters Elizabeth and Don Juan to read the 5 Languages of Love by Gary Chapman. The writers Celelia Castaldo and Loris Peota should also study magic from JK Rowling's Harry Potter just so they don't make a huge embarrassment of themselves across the world. Lastly, the director Kim J OK should also learn about how to incorporate anthropomorphic animals into a kids' film by studying from Disney movies. Damn! Don't give them any ideas.
Just watch James Cameron's Titanic (1997) and stop paying attention to this crap otherwise it will become popular and we will have to deal with more idiots making excuses for this crap that truly is only useful as a doorstop.