cherbo Reviews

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (2009)

x b j l

[3/10 · 10 August 2009]

Maybe there's a reason that they decided to skip critics screening, deciding, wisely i might add, that they'd vote unanimously that this film is xi bei jia lat. i.e. really damnably bad.

I've enjoyed stephen sommers movies in the past - the mummy series and the scorpion king, but g.i joe suffers from bad pacing, really crummy casting and stupendously sub standard computer graphics. The lead especially is just gut wrenchingly wooden and i'm dumbfounded at the casting of marlon wayans. Just looking at wayans with the redhead, made me think of wayans in the white chicks. oh yeah! she looks like the wayans brother. well done casting....

This movie would satisfy the young average movie goer, but if you're looking for a grittier gi joe, which from the recent trends of comic- movie adaptations was what i expected, this isn't it. For the kids, it'll probably be a blast.

The Hand (1981)

A great blast to watch in this millennium

[8/10 · 5 August 2009]

Not a lot of people feel this, but the way films are made have changed since the beginning of the millennium. From blocking, cinematography, film stock, writing, pacing, everything is different. So it's really refreshing to watch michael caine do his thing in this oliver stone horrorfest. What might have been over the top campy shtick in the 80s becomes infinitely watchable.

I agree about the similarities to the shining but doesn't quite match up. The comments about the burning car i don't agree with. It's inserted to show michael caine getting unhinged the more he suspects he's got a pet killer hand out there.

A great movie to check out. Really fun.

Blood: The Last Vampire (2009)

it's damnably bad

[1/10 · 5 June 2009]

This movie is so far up rubbish creek, that it nearly achieves b-grade greatness ........ if only i didn't have to pay for the tickets. The writing is bad, the direction is ridiculous, the photography is budget, the sets as well and best of all the actors can't even speak English without stumbling.

It was so bad nearly any dialogue involving the white witch onigen made everyone in the theatre laugh. In fact after a while, everything was laughable.

The sad part about this movie is it takes itself too seriously. It's like a tepid uwe boll movie without the laughs. You can tell that if this was given to a different director, the dialogue in Japanese and importantly, everything else including the crew were Japanese instead of a cut rate crew from china, the movie could have been saved.

The absolutely funny thing is, with so few actual people watching this and voting correctly, the astro turfers have managed to keep the IMDb rating artificially high.

you have been warned!!!

The Fourth World War (2004)

Really not that insightful

[4/10 · 16 August 2006]

Really it's an extremely one sided view of the many confrontations in the world, trying to tie the knot that links corporations to poverty, and how it's all ultimately a battle between the haves and the have nots. It doesn't quite help that the poetry is a little on the high school side. Michael Moore does a better job of being one sided while seeming to be righteous.

The documentary simply suffers from having too many subjects. Every revolution shown was just skimming the surface. The producers knew that too, which is why the Palestine conflict had just less than 10 minutes of screen time. With a more narrow focus and some balanced reporting, this could have been good.

It would be better to just watch Fahrenheit 911 or some Noam Chomsky documentary - power and terror - is good.