Reviews

I have seen 8th graders perform Shakespeare with more talent than the actors in this movie. It is truly painful to watch The story is just mediocre, and it feels written in one evening by a hack who read a Lovecraft story two days ago and got an itch to write about it. The animation is about on the level of a cheap computer animated kids show,making shows like Shimmer and Shine look worthy of Academy Awards. This is a true waste of time. If you have any respect for Lovecraft, don't watch this. If you don't, still do not watch this. Anything that might encourage anoth3r one of these movies is an insult to movie creators and movie lovers everywhere.

I love the idea of a talent show that focuses on more than just singing, especially the same old adult contemporary music that we hear over and over and over again on the likes of American Idol, Star Search, or any other popular talent competition. The problem is that when it comes down to it it ends up being nothing more than a singing competition with some other performers thrown in for good measure, but without a shot at winning.

The "judges" constantly berate people for not being diverse or "mixing it up" enough, which flies in the face of what the show is supposed to be about. Take, for instance, the martial arts exhibition group Sideswipe. They were told by all of the judges that they wanted to see more than just punching and kicking, and that they had to do more dancing and add more production to their numbers if they were going to have a shot at winning. WHAT!?!?!? They are a martial arts group. . . . . PUNCHING AND KICKING IS WHAT THEY DO!!! Why not tell the singers that they need to add more flips and jumps and tumbling to their acts? When it comes down to it the judges, and America, do not consider anything other than singing to be real talent, and that is a shame, because the variety is what could be the shows strongest feature.

In defense of the show, there is much more variety than you will see on American Idol. At the end of the second season there is a blues/reggae singer, a young American Idolish singer (though not of the same caliber), a ventriloquist/impressionist whose act is 99% singing, and a beat boxing singer. There is more variety than many other talent competitions, but it would be really nice to see more of the true variety acts and far fewer singing acts.

Another negative is that the show would be totally unwatchable without TIVO. Less than half of every show actually involves performing, and they spend way too much time on background info and letting you know what is coming up "after the break."

This film is unusual and bizarre, and it is nearly unusual and bizarre in a very good way. I give this short a 7 just because it is so unique and off-the-wall, but much of the time it seems as though it is being bizarre just for the sake of being bizarre. If the film had managed to integrate its more bizarre moments into some semblance of a plot then it would have been really fantastic.

The main problem here is that it looks as though the creators just jumbled together a bunch of crap about spatulas, then threw in a whole bunch more crap that sounded as though it would sound funny coming from the mouth of a spatula.

This is definitely worth checking out, but it is not top rate by any stretch of the creators wild imaginations.

This was a fantastic short film that I had the pleasure of seeing at the Mill Avenue Animation Festival in Tempe, AZ in 1992. This film is a great combination of spooky, cute, suspenseful, and freaky. While it reminds me of Tim Burton, it is more genuine. The story plays like an Edgar Allen Poe work, in that it is simple and to the point, while leaving a lasting mark. The animation is very Edward Gory, mixing cartoonish elements with the macabre. This piece is definitely on a different page than other animation, and I find myself thinking about it much more than should be demanded by a short film, and I would love the opportunity to see it again. Stop motion is usually very hit or miss for me, and in this case it is a dead on hit.

I loved the acting and directing in this film, and I thought that the effects were quite good, but the story was lacking, and the tone was too persistently dark.

As far as the story, it just felt like a jumble of events without a solid story line. I have grown accustomed to the Harry Potter films having much of the story cut out, it is to be expected if you want a movie to come in at under 4 hours, but this was extreme. The title of the movie is Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, but the Order does not play more than a VERY minor, passing role that may as well have been completely omitted from the movie all together. There are several things that make this movie hard to follow as a story in itself, rather than just a bridge between movies.

As far as the mood of the movie, I understand that this was the darkest book to date, but the movie cut out all of the joy and levity present in the book. The entire book was not just a dark brood-fest, and that made the book palatable. The drudgery just got old after a while.

It is often said that the movies are supposed to be taken on their own merits, ignoring the quality of the books or the previous movies. Doing that with this movie only makes the movie worse, because out of the context of the books and other movies this film was complete gibberish. As a part of a series the movie was entertaining, but it really needed to add about 45 more minutes of story in order to stand on its own.

This would have made two great movies, but it makes one very weak one. There are three story lines going on at the same time, and none of them gets enough attention to fully develop the story. This left me with a very contradictory feeling at the end of the movie, thinking both "That was it?" and "My god that was a long movie." Another problem with this movie is that all of the story lines are ended abruptly and in a very unconvincing way.

The special effects were OK at times, but for the most part the movie looked more like a video game than like something that was supposed to be convincing. The action moved too quickly and was too dark to follow most of the time, which left me more confused than impressed most of the time.

I loved the first two Spider Man movies, and I was very excited to see the third one, but unfortunately the entire movie was a disappointment.

This was a very good movie, and well worth seeing, but it did not live up to the hype. The cinematography was flawed, many times things that could have been shot using traditional methods were modified using computers and came off looking cheap and pixilated. Many of the song and dance numbers were just plain uninteresting, and most of the performances were not stellar. It was worth admission, but it was not the wonderful movie that everyone has been saying it is, which made me leave the theater disappointed.

It is said that the hardest part about translating a good book into a movie is catching the "spirit" of the book. This movie actually manages to capture the spirit of the novel without ever using a single line or scene from the book. Though the basic premise is the same, so much has been altered from the book that it is amazing that the screenplay managed to convey the spirit and feeling of the book so well. This movie was thoroughly entertaining and extremely good on many levels. I would say that this is the best spy/assassin movie that I have seen in many years, and the performances are first rate. Highly recommended.

The most surprising thing about this movie was how normal it was. The special effects were sometimes average and sometimes outright laughable. The plot was under-thought and seemed thrown together at the last minute. The characters were quite plain and gave no reason to care one way or another about them. I guess that I was expecting something on par with Toy Story or Shrek, and this movie did not even begin to compare to those movies, which is a shame because there was potential there that was completely wasted on this film.

Never have I seen a movie that has borrowed so much, with borrowed songs, a borrowed plot, borrowed settings, and borrowed dialogue, and yet been so original. You really have to see this movie to believe it, because the more someone attempts to describe it the more stupid the movie will sound. There is no way on Earth that this movie should have succeeded. If I had read the script or a plot outline I would have assumed that it would go down in history as one of the worst bombs of all time, but somehow this movie manages to pull off what should have been impossible. The music, the acting, the sets, and the directing were all wonderful, and it is one of those rare movies that you cant get out of your mind. I would highly recommend this movie to anyone, even if just for the unique experience alone.

This movie is a wonderful blend of fantasy, comedy, adult humor, and childish whimsy. A blatantly off-the-wall film, it earns chuckles and outright laughs with a greater frequency than any movie I have seen in quite a while, and it is always s joy to hear a theater full of people laugh along with you. Unlike most movies, and especially comedies, the vast majority of the good parts, as well as many of the crucial plot points and twists, were left out of the trailer. Though it was not hard to figure out what was going to happen in the end, the details of the road they take to get there are completely unpredictable and delightfully surprising. The visuals were beautiful, but after the first few moments you forget them unless you consciously pay attention, which is how all visuals and special effects should be. If you were spending the whole movie oohing and aahing, you would miss all of the funny parts and maybe take this movie seriously, which you are obviously not supposed to do. The wonderful visual effects are so believable that you can forget that you are, in essence, watching a cartoon, while still maintaining a fantastical quality throughout. Another great point about this movie was that the jokes that may not be suitable for children are so subtle done that the vast majority of the youngsters will not even notice that they are not getting a joke. This is truly a great family film that you can take kids to, or see by yourself. Yes, there is a lot of "gross-out" humor, but hopefully you are not going to see this movie with visions of Shakespeare running through your head. Go to see this movie, and before you do you should change the channel every time a preview comes on, the minimal previews cannot last for long.

This movie is really getting a bum rap from critics. The movie is a fun action film that is completely aware that it is nothing more than a fun action film. So what if the laws of physics do not apply. So what if the acting is melodramatic, the dialogue is cheesy, and the characters in this movie world seem aware of it. That is the point. The "Mummy" movies are to action movies as the first "Scream" movie was to horror, just without a character thrown in to tell you every time that the movie is being a parody/stereotype. If you want to see a cinematic masterpiece, go to see Memento. If you want to have fun and suspend reality for a couple of hours, go to see The Mummy Returns.

This movie is just what an action movie should be, it is a breathtaking, non-stop thrill while watching it, and then it gives you enough to think about afterwards that it causes you to want to go back for more. The film is a perfect blend between desperation, thoughtfulness, comedy, and drama. This movie gives you the rare choice of watching it on a purely superficial, purely entertaining level, or thinking deeply about it and paying close attention to every detail. A superb film.

Unbreakable was a very enjoyable and thought provoking movie, mixed with equal parts suspense, comedy, drama, and action. The movie, while not an edge of your seat thriller, was able to keep interest in it from the beginning to the end with subtle revelations and plot expansion. The largest fault in the film which deals with pacing. The movie is slow, and there are a lot of times when it seems as though the pace should be picked up a couple of notches. Unbreakable is not the Sixth Sense, thank goodness. There were similarities, as there would be in any directors films, such as his use of color to offer visual clues and emotional weight. Given the comic book backdrop of the plot, I think that the use of color is more fitting in this movie, assigning the colors much as a comic book artist would. There is also the idea of a "surprise ending" that is carried over from the Sixth Sense, however the ending is not nearly as crucial as it was in the earlier movie. In the Sixth Sense, the ending was crucial to the plot. The ending "reinvented" the movie, and it was in many ways the defining moment of the movie. In Unbreakable, the ending was there to fill in the gaps in the plot, gaps that I generally noticed, then forgot about, and which were all brought together in the end. This was a fine movie, it is a fun concept that everybody at one time has thought about, and it puts forward fantastical ideas with the foundation being real people with real problems, real jobs, and real lives.

There has finally been a movie this year that I can truly say was surprising from beginning to end. There was not a moment in this film that sold out to convention, and there is not a movie in recent memory that I have been happier to have missed all of the previews of. It is the rare movie, much less a comedy, that one can truly say was original, yet easy to relate to and enjoyable, yet this one was one of those rare few. I know that this movie will not get the critical recognition of a movie like Pulp Fiction, but it is every bit as original for not taking the easy way out, yet succeeding because of it.

This movie is not filled with tons of special effects, and it is not a psychological thriller that will keep you up at night, but it is a strong movie, with strong performances, that is a great choice if you are looking for a suspense movie that you have not seen and that will entertain you. There are very slim pickings when it comes to a decent suspense, and the options become fewer for the suspense fan that has seen just about everything. Try this one, you will be glad you did.

This was a very poor movie that had the potential to be much better than it was, a current trend in movies it seems. The dialogue was cliche, the actions of the characters made no sense about 90% of the time, and there was not one second of the movie that could not be predicted at least fifteen minutes in advance, usually an hour or more in advance. With the exception of the Holliston Coleman and Christina Ricci (who has a total of about two minutes of screen time), the acting was overly dramatic or just plain bad. If this script had be re-written to remove the religious cliches and the cheesy dialogue, and if the director had found a way to get decent performances our of usually great actors, this movie could have been amazing, however as it stands this movie left me laughing when I should have been on the edge of my seat, and sighing and nodding my head when I should have been covering my eyes. If you are tempted to go see this movie, save yourself the money and go rent "The Omen", "The Exorcist", "Rosemary's Baby", and "The Seventh Sign", and "Jacobs Ladder". You will see basically every scene that you see in this movie, but you will have the benefit of enjoying decent acting, directing, and screenwriting.

54 was a good movie that did not live up to its potential. The story is excellent, and a number of the performances were outstanding (especially that of Mike Meyers), but in the end I walked out of the theater wishing that any of the dozen or so sub-plots were expanded upon. This movie tried to be about drug use, promiscuous and careless sex, an eccentric club owner , trying to make ones dreams come true at all costs, the dingier side (and price) of stardom, the strong desire of the "system" to get rid of the club and the free spirited attitude that caused it to be so successful, romance, the degradation of family values and relationships, and the consequences of all of the above. In the end however, with what seems must have been about five or six hours worth of film on the cutting room floor, this was a decent movie about a club employee and his scattered memories of his time spent there. 54 was entertaining, but it could have been great. I believe that most audiences will leave the theatre feeling that they were missing something.