Reviews

You people amaze me.

Because someone films a woman getting bludgeoned to death with a hammer in unflinching detail (as Boll has done in a recent film) does not mean he's making some eloquent statement on violence, or shows atrocity in Darfur, does not mean he cares anything about Darfur, or is a humanitarian, particularly if the film is nothing more than a showcase for horrible actions, with no real moral compass.

It's an exploitation film people. He's using a serious topic to feed a ravenous, hungry, gore obsessed film audience, their shock and awe. He's giving you your 'horror' movie.

Are the profits to this movie going to a NP working in the region such as Okfam? Did it spur you to donate money? Is there a plea to call your congress person.

It's all but a snuff film, it is true pornography. Violence only for violence's sake. And you praise him for it? And then incite others to see it, as if you're leading some humanitarian charge? Be honest.

Just a little while, with yourself... be honest You are titillated.

If you really want a film about the civil wars ravaging Central Africa, one of the best is DARESALAM by Issa Serge Coelo, filmed in 2000, it's a masterful film, that gives a surprising amount of depth to the fighting, specifically in Chad, but its truths resonate throughout the continent.

And beyond.

However perhaps all you want to see is the money shots. Perhaps all you want to see is people suffer and die.

You sad hypocrites.

He's feeding your need, for gore. Don't make anything more of it than that. You want to know the situation in Darfur, there are lots of non-profits out there that will inform you, and could put your money to better use, than you renting or buying a DVD filled with just people's suffering. Than faces of death.

Our fictions have to spur us toward some higher calling, some higher ideals, something not unlike hope, Because if our fictions don't make that leap toward hope, towards a better way, our facts never will.

If all our fictions can offer us, is to profit in the horror of our facts, than we become conspirators in those acts. Confused, gibbering applauders of the deeds.

You want do something about Darfur. Join Oxfam, or your NP of choice, and give. But don't praise an exploitation movie and director, and think you've done anything... but sully your soul.

Let me say this. I'm a fan of early 70s Argento. I think he's in his first half dozen or so movies, one of the most exciting and stylish directors of his generation. His DEEP RED I consider a great film, a masterpiece, that the planned remake (helmed by Argento) will only insult.

Dario post 70s, into the 80s and beyond is a very different director. While credited with assisting on the story on various films, ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST comes to mind, Dario was always a poor screenwriter, and even worse at dialog.

PHENOMENA is Dario Argento at his absolute most incompetent. The film is garbage, it's one of the stupidest written films... ever, just an outlandish, lacking all common sense script, with stilted,stagnant, insipid dialog, and acting that is just as poor and wooden, the soundtrack is garbage, and the direction, from someone normally as stylish as Argento,is insipid and pedestrian. It really is a god-awful movie, so bad, outlandish, absurd and poorly acted that it is laughable in all the wrong ways.

The ending had me laughing in derision. It is utter garbage. Well not complete garbage, the film does have one shining light, the young Jennifer Conelly who is, even at that young age, obviously the stuff of stars, she is so good and magnetic, that it only shows by comparison how truly crappy everything around her is.

How she survived making a film with the lunatic that was Dario in the 80s, or how her parents allowed her to do this turkey... baffles. Though without a doubt it put her name on the map.

As an Argento fan, it's sad to see a film like this from him.

Anyone who gives this train-wreck more than a 6 (and that's easily double what it deserves), needs to go back to grading class. If Dario has a movie worse than this... I don't want to see it. F--.

I've gotten out of the habit of posting on IMDb, for the simple fact there is no moderation here.

IMDb is increasingly padded with suspect reviews, and is not a reliable measure of whether a movie is good or bad.

THE STRANGERS is case in point.

It beggars all description, that anyone, with any integrity or sense of taste could equate this film to "HALLOWEEN" or "THE SHINING" or could call it a good movie much less the "greatest" horror movie in the last decade, or a "masterpiece", even accounting for varying standards of taste--- that's just a glaring and hateful lie.

You can not, be a human being with a functional brain, paid to have sat through this movie, and think you have seen a good movie.

It is not in the realm of possibility.

So how do I account for the positive reviews: morons and padded reviews.

And IMDb can easily address the padded reviews... a series of inexplicably similar reviews in close proximity from the same range of addresses, should be thrown out.

If IMDb can't be bothered to police their own site, then my general opinion is screw em. But I wanted other people to not fall for the hype, and most of the dissenting reviews are from people who have posted no other reviews. And I know for myself, I put no stock in one review comments, whether good or bad.

Me having some reviews under my belt, I thought it fell to me, to help give people a real review of this film.

Anyone who knows me, knows I'm pretty easy on movies. Heck look at my INDIANA JONES AND THE CRYSTAL SKULL review (http://heroictimes.wordpress.com), I like the film while everyone else wants to lynch it up.

So when I tell you THE STRANGERS is one of the few movies I actually walked out on, you'll understand that it has to be pretty bad. If you go by IMDb… the reviews would lead you to believe this film was the 2nd coming of SEVEN, when nothing could be further from the truth.

The film is just tired and clichéd and annoying. With the characters doing every annoying clichéd thing people do in stupid movies. Don't believe your girlfriend when she tells you someone has been in the house— leave her alone while you go on some harebrained scheme— and it's supposedly based on a true story, but I'm sure the stupidity is all the filmmakers.

I'm sitting in the theater watching Liv Tyler scurry around on the grass, with her butt sticking up and her lips all full and sexy (grrrowwl), and acting terrified, and as much as I welcome any chance to see Liv Tyler's ass in the air... she's too good an actress for this lame piece of garbage.

I'm sitting in the theater and I'm bored, and I'm thinking life is too short to spend another second watching this lame piece of offal. I just don't care about it, or how it ended, they live, they die, they move to Mars… just didn't care.

I just think the film insulted my intelligence with these lame, cliché ridden characters. Particularly the boyfriend annoyed the heck out of me, I didn't care if they lived or died, and just so he would stop annoying me I was leaning strongly toward die, in his case. All in all, a waste of $12 (matinee showing+parking).

That 2000+ people on IMDb rate this film by first time director Bryan Bertino, highly enough to get 7+ stars, fills me, like Bush getting elected twice. with dubiousness and more than a twinge of loathing. God we're raising stupid people, that think banality is brilliance.

This film is not even worth a rental.

It's worth noting a lot of the praise reviews are one time posters, which is usually a film's PR people, trying to drum up support by posting multiple reviews. So as a rule I discount any review by someone, who has no other reviews to their credit.

That said I urge you to check out JM Kiff's review, cause he summarizes exactly my issues with the flick, and with the "praise" for it.

Surprisingly well directed, well filmed. Camera work, performances, sound track are impressive.

But its content/subject matter for all intents and purposes makes us accomplices in the crimes. Glorifies the serial killers and the killing. Watching people being abused and killed, just is not how I want to spend 2 hours.

I'm a hopeless romantic, I believe in heroes riding in to defend the defenseless. And that's most definitely not what this movie is about.

Not my cup of tea.

One of the few movies I had no interest in finishing. Pass.

Onk Bak II starts off the first 15 minutes as if it's really going to offer a strong cohesive story, at least a credible one, something lacking from the first. But that quickly goes out the window once they hit Australia. I don't know whose brilliant idea it was to have people who can't speak English attempt to, but it made scenes laughable that shouldn't have been.

And beyond the poor performances; the story and editing, from transsexual gang-lords to throwing elephants, resembled nothing so much as a mental patients wet dream.

All that said, all those glaring faults I've mentioned weighed, they are absolutely overshadowed by 6 or 7 absolutely riveting action sequences!!! Beyond the first Ong Bak itself, you have to go back to Fist of Legend to find action sequences this riveting!!! I was blown away! Absolutely Amazing.

Some were of course better than others, the last fight with the wrestlers I found arguably the weakest of the bunch. But all earned your time and attention! As soon as the flick was over, I started it again to watch some of the fight scenes. And arguably the fights were more stagy than the first film, as some have commented, but I found them on a whole to be far more beautiful and better filmed fights.

And I have to say, my complaints about the editing to the side, there is some brilliant direction/camera work in this film.

I'm not familiar with the director, but this is amazing, amazing camera work. Particularly I believe fight #3, in the club, which appears to be one unbroken tracking shot from the bottom of the club to the top! ABSOLUTELY JAW DROPPING!!!!!

So by no means is this film going to win any merit for story, or editing, or even lucidity, but for simple adrenalin inducing scenes... you'll find few its equal. Bad story or not, the film is indisputably essential action viewing.

Story gets a D-,Action gets an A+, so that averages out to a C+. And yes it is superior to the first movie. Recommended.

Not my cup of tea.

Miike seems to have a cult following of desensitized, budding little sociopaths that hyena bark themselves silly anytime he shows people crapping on camera or a killer vagina.

Miike seems to be a director for a generation raised on Fear Factor, for a generation raised on the idea that the suffering and humiliation of others and themselves, the defilement of themselves, makes for good entertainment.

He's a director for a soulless generation that thinks SIN CITY or BORN NATURAL KILLERS or SYMPATHY FOR MR. VENGEANCE are great moves.

I don't quite fall in that category, so I can only review his films... as films. Based on an archaic morality, based on an absurd idea, that a movie at its worst... should be unpleasant to lead us to some worthy conclusion, not be unpleasant for its own sake.

In Fudoh, it's all sensationalism.

But sensationalism devoid of a story or characters you care the least amount about, sensationalism devoid of any real center or real sense of concern for the people who dance on the screen in front of you... sensationalism for its own sake is pornography in the real sense of that word.

I've got no problem with adults being adults, with sex, or naked people, I'm no type of prude, (heck I'm a huge fan of films from CASABLANCA to DEVIL AND MRS. JONES to John Woo's THE KILLERS) but I have a problem with films that dehumanize us, and desensitize us, that have no joy in them, that feed are baser serial-killer want-to-be instincts without any thought to our higher ones.

And Fudoh (and Dead Alive, a movie that I found even more of a waste of film) is such a movie. About young gangsters and vengeance ostensibly. But its really just a loose excuse to string together a string of shock and gore.

I bought Fudoh (I can buy for the price of renting usually)based on reviews posted here, and promptly sold Fudoh.

Not my cup of tea.

First let me say I'm a fan of Melville. His compositions of a frame, his use of silence, his held shots, but THE RED CIRCLE is not one of Melville's better films.

Melville was always a minimalist, he was never a director who had much to say, 60% of his films were always... silence. So a 100 minute movie for Melville, was really only 40 mins of movie with 60 mins of style. His best movies, Le Doulous and Le Samourai, stay right around this 100 minute mark, coming in at 108 and 105 minutes respectfully. And at that length, they take Melville's minimalism and style as far as it can go, without slumping into tedium or filler.

At a 140 minutes Red Circle, falls headlong into tedium and filler. It is Melville's emptiest movie, with his customary 40 mins of story now horrifically stretched into two hours and 20 minutes. There's a lot to like in pieces about this movie; the train break, the trunk scene, but they are few and far between.

Two nearly identical long scenes of the inspector feeding his cats, the laughably ineffective hallucination scene, and the robbery itself, unlike his earlier works... are flawed uses of silences. Melville, perhaps believing his own hype, takes it too far, they are tedious, tedious scenes.

He tries to outdo Asphalt Jungle and Rififi and he fails miserably. And even edited down substantially the movie would still fail, because the 40mins of story that Le Doulos and Samourai had... were brilliant, RED CIRCLE is not. While Melville did the script for all three of these films, the first two were sourced from acclaimed novels of the time.

Here in RED CIRCLE Melville goes it alone, making up his own story, and it shows, in a confused and muddled film that ends as poorly and as unconvincingly as any film in recent memory.

All in all, not Melville's finest hour. So have to side here with Bluesdoctor, Bornjaded, Mike, and Steve and give this one a fail.

** out of ****.

I saw this film first, years ago. Must have been 10 or more years back. And it made me think of Kurosawa. And how much more I enjoyed the films of Okamoto over Kurosawa.

I like Kurosawa, I'm just not one of the rabid legion of fanatics for his films. The remakes of his Yojimba, Seven Samarai (which really are remakes of John Ford westerns, translated to the east) such as Leone's Dollars movies, and Sturge's Magnificent Seven, I prefer to Kurosawa's films.

While technically a marvelous Director, Kurosawa's work can be cold, distant. There is a standoffishness there, that is similar to Fritz Lang's willingness to stand back and bask in his angles, and patterns, the frame of the story.

Directors like Sturges are about the meat of the story, they are directors of moments rather than motion. Which is why I rate his Magnificent Seven higher than the Seven Samurai. It connects with me more.

Leone, while also a clinical director, concerned with framing, alternates that with a consummate passion for closeups, that makes his spare films, bloody with warmth.

I used to write it off to just East West differences, that accounted for the regimented to the point of distance... films of Japan. However, then I saw this film, SWORD OF DOOM, a film as clinical, and precise as any made by Kurosawa or Lang, but filled with a pathos and passion that dripped from every frame.

A longing... for everything and nothing.

Others have commented on this film: -from the patently odd assertions of this film's protagonist as some "avenging angel sent by God" (if that was the case he would have felt no guilt for his crimes, and the glorious, berserk ending would not have come about. The beauty of this film is that it is about a man... floundering, peering into the last gates of hell, and hoping against hope for something to break his fall. What makes this film interesting, is that sense, given only through the eyes, of inner conflict in everything the Sword Bearer does.) -to the missing the point cries of "explanatory sequel/2nd half needed" and "compromised end". I've seen the films this movie is based off of. They are all, complete, informed, every "I" dotted, and every "T" crossed, and every single one is grossly inferior to this film.

This film doesn't need a beginning, and it doesn't need an end. Doesn't need a sequel or a prequel, it is a Masterpiece for the simple fact of it's open ended nature. It transcends Alphas and Omegas, because it lives in that freeze frame between them. It is forever a film of the now, and one man caught in it.

The best review of all posted, and the one I urge you to read, is one of the earliest. Done back in May of 2000 by tais0.

To that review of the film itself, I cannot add or subtract anything. It is the best of all that I have read, the most brilliant. However I will clarify several mistakes regarding the director.

Someone wrote this film was an aberration for the director, and mentioned NIGHT OF THE HUNTER. Though that is not a comparison that makes sense. NIGHT OF THE HUNTER, a brilliant film, was the only one ever directed by Charles Laughton. Okamoto, who just recently passed away this February, directed 39 films.

And while this is his best, he directed several nearly as good, and just as beautiful. At his heart the Director had a love for musicals, like many of the greatest directors he had the heart of a composer. His early films included three crime/Underworld films with Toshiro Mifune. his two John Ford inspired DESPERADO films (mixing action with humor),and then finally a musical... that bombed horribly.

After that he got into the Samurai genre (the genre that was profitable at the time), but brought to it an editing style, and a use of sound, that was completely musically inspired. What is startling and brilliant about SWORD OF DOOM, is the soundtrack. The use of sound and silence as bold counterpoint to the story unfolding before your eyes.

That style permeates all of his films from 1964 on, to include: Warring Clans(1964), Samurai Assassin (1965), Sword of Doom (1966), Kill! (1968), Red Lion (1969), Zatoichi series Zatoichi Meets Yojimbo (1970).

Two of his films I'm dying to see are later works, infused with the comedy and love of music that characterized his often overlooked career. Dixieland Daimyo(1986)- the story of a quartet of Black jazz musicians lost in 19th-century Japan, and Vengeance for Sale (2001- the director's final film)-light-hearted Samurai tale.

So by no means was Kihachi Okamoto a one hit wonder. I think history will reevaluate his contributions to film, and place his name up there with Kobyashi and Kurosawa and Seijun Suzuki as one of Japan's best.

There is something, very... very... wrong here

Not specifically with the movie,though there is much wrong with that as well. No what disturbs me is this laudatory praise for a film, that even adjusting for varying degrees of taste, and standards, and mores... is by construction an empty, soulless movie.

Don't get me wrong, my issue isn't comics, or violence, or brutality or sex. My issue isn't with these things in a film, it's with these things in lieu of a film.

I have an issue with violence, and idiocy, misanthropy, and misogyny when these things fail to advance a story or a morality. It's the problem I have with Natural Born Killers, or Kill Bill, or... WWE wrestling or most reality television.

Don't get me wrong, I like good horror and action films as much as the next guy. But I ask of them to be films, to have a story, a plot, a moral center, a morality.

The negative, hateful aspects of our nature, the brutality, the hatred, the torture, the violence, when done for no other reason than to revel in these traits, is what I consider true pornography. I think films like this, as one excellent reviewer stated, are soft substitutes for snuff films.

I'm not a comic-book hater or snob, I know there are several people in the Comic medium... making riveting, admirable work. Names like Moore, Priest, Bendis, come to mind. And Frank Miller.

I'm a fan of Miller, but his work has never translated well to the big screen. His work, often uncredited, was the inspiration for most of the comic book movies of the last 20 years. And most of them are really, really bad.

And people are usually content to blame the director for making changes to the source. Here Rodriguez... to headoff any such comments, crams all the Sin City stories into one Miller inspired red, black and white screen sized comic book panel. A commendable idea that unfortunately fails horribly in the execution.

Here's a very brief outline of why:

-look, the look that has been praised for being garishly comic booky, is also its flaw. Page and screen are different mediums. What seems serious or haunting in one, comes off as campy and ludicrous in the other. Rourke's makeup, the band aids, the blood, the cheesy blown off limbs... it comes off as cheep and stupid.

-casting- casting name actors, stars, was a mistake, Because you're always distinctly aware it's rourke, and hauer, and willis, and madsen, play-acting these characters. There's no "acting" here. The film is really with few exceptions, full of poor, cartoony performances that left me bored out of my mind in the theater.

-structure- it was a mistake to make SinCity a melding of four different stories, rather than pick one book and flesh it out into a real story.

The reason is... Frank Miller repeats himself... a lot.

And the repetition that goes overlooked when there are months between these stories on the page, becomes glaringly obvious when followed one after the other on the big screen. Around the 3rd head in the toilet, or castration by gun riff, or Black evil henchmen slavish stereotype, and I was not only seriously bored, but also more than a little disappointed.

You begin to see Miller has some reoccurring issues going on here, and he really has not had anything new to say in the last 20 years, but keeps reworking his same old fetishes of big butts, big lips, toilet humor, and castration over and over again.

It came as something as a surprise to me, a Frank Miller fan, to realize just what a bloody hack he has become.

I wonder if looking at his work compressed... if it has become obvious to him as well.

A real director would have caught the failings of this structure, the repetition, the substitution of toilet humor, parody, and violence for anything resembling character. But like Miller himself, this film is directed by two others who have for the last few years simply been repeating themselves.

Rodriguez, who while competent at staging action scenes, is exceedingly incompetent at creating characters... situations, that we remotely care about.

And an action scene where you don't care if the character ducks a bullet or not, where there is no suspense, or fear or love for the character, is one of the most boring things in the world. Rodriguez has not made a good movie since his first one, and as his budgets have grown bigger he's grown equally better at crafting movies, filled with boring scenes... of action. Action drained of everything that makes it ... action.

Tarantino, off his equally bankrupt and boring Kill Bill series, has proved himself an equally flawed director. 2 once promising directors, 1 once great minimalist writer, add up to a film that is about noise over substance, laziness over character, and attitude over intellect.

In short they have given us a film for an age and a generation that no longer has any idea what quality is. A generation of monkeys who know neither beauty or brilliance, but simply flashing colors, loud noises, and broad photography of balls or breasts. And of course violence.

Violence.

This... WWE, Rush Limbaugh, Fear Factor, nightly news, bomb them all, Black men villains, Black women hors... generation knows violence. Maybe because it's all they're being shown these days.

Stereotypes.

You want to check out some good Comic Book inspired flicks try:

The first Crow First Two Superman movies 2nd Spiderman The first Punisher-with Dolph Lundgren, and Louis Gosett Jr. First Robocop 1st Matrix League of Extraordinary Gentlemen 1st Blade

Any of the above is better than SinCity, a film that ultimately has too many sins to recommend it.

Checked out THE LEOPARD, the full, uncut, subtitled criterion version. and while it is without doubt a large, elaborate, well filmed spectacle, it has one glaring flaw... it's not that engaging. The first hour is interminable, with perhaps one of the largest, and most listless battle scenes ever caught on film.

When Visconti moves away from his uneven 1st hour, and his failed attempt to film the anarchy of the revolution, and gets back into personal relationships, his specialty, the film picks up.

While it never attains the sumptuous, wrenching power of Visconti's black and white Neo-Realistic masterpieces, such as the absolutely harrowing and brilliant ROCCO AND HIS THREE BROTHERS (also starring Alain Delon), it has moments of subtle satire, and dripping beauty. One of my favorite scenes in the movie is the return of the Noble family, after the revolution.

They come back to the town that has moved on, and they sit in church surrounded by people making a new destiny, the masses full of life and energy, and the Leopard and his family by comparison are dusty relics, looking mutely on, as the world leaves them behind, A brilliant visual moment.

However there are too few of those moments to sustain the films length. And much like the nobles it details, the film (mostly about indulgence and boredom) winds slowly down, slowly, like a tired machine. And finally, mercifully... stops. An interesting flawed film, far from great, far from the director's best, and not one I'd want to sit through again. ** out of ****.

I keep thinking about the things that capture our imagination. The places and the names, a concert at Altamont, a brisk day in Dec of 1969, where 4 people died.

And the name that sticks is Meredith Hunter.

Without doubt it was an orgy of... suspect choices, and flawed intentions.

The Hell's Angels were of course at fault, when you handle security, the fault for things getting... unsecure, out of hand, stops with you.

The power of peacekeeping, means the responsibility of keeping... the peace. As has been mentioned, Hell's Angels have done the job before, and they've done it well. But this time, the wrong Hell's Angels were chosen, soldiers rather than chiefs. Requesting payoff in beer, should have been a tipoff. Rather than keeping the peace, they were destroying the peace, they were whipping up a storm, and one young man would find himself when the music died... squarely at the the center of it.

So the promoters were a little lax in their choice of security. But in 1969 everyone was lax, it was a different time. This concert would help change those times.

Meredith Hunter. Was he a good person? a bad person? So few of us can answer that question with any real conviction about ourselves, much less anyone else.

He was a sharp, groovy, good looking kid of 18. Tough and Tall, and dangerous, in that way that young men in America, are always dangerous. With an easy smile, that endeared him to everyone who knew him. A young man that wasn't above speaking up when the Angels were terrorizing people. He stepped in once too often, and became the target. He was a tall kid, and he had a good jab, but he was outnumbered.

Vastly outnumbered.

He wasn't going to take the pool-stick beating, everyone else was getting, not quietly he wasn't.

The equalizer, (the news about the violence had gotten out, and half the crowd had equalizers by this time) came out of nowhere, it stopped everyone immediately in front of him. But as is always the case... death came from behind. The rest happened quickly, and is caught here.

The music, the moment, the angels, the crowd, and a young man with the easy vibe of a young Hendrix; called Meredith Hunter. I often think of that young man, there... hanging with his girl and his friends. There to watch BB, and Tina, and the Stones, there to have a good time.

And found history waiting for him.

Was he a good man? A bad man? Those are determinations for saints, a dying commodity in a world of sinners.

He was a young man, who if you knew him... I think you would have liked him, a young man who didn't get to grow old; and there is tragedy in that.

I looked up the definition of tragedy, one of its definitions I found brutal, but memorable: A drama or literary work in which the main character is brought to ruin or suffers extreme sorrow, especially as a consequence of a tragic flaw, moral weakness, or inability to cope with unfavorable circumstances.

To recount the story of what happened, is to bleed it into drama. What happened that day... was drama defined.

And so, like a generation of young men who stayed young forever, those who fell in Kent State, and Ohio State, and in Watts, Hunter's unfavorable circumstances were living in an America where you are always outnumbered, and always out-gunned; and his tragic flaw was standing up for himself regardless.

By that definition, what happened that Dec 6th, will always be something not unlike an American tragedy, a moment that embodies more than itself. And Hunter, for falling down while going forward, will always embody something not unlike American youth, American folly, and American heroism.

And a film that can keep that day remembered, has both supporters and detractors. Something about the thin line between acknowledging the moment, and exploiting it. All these years later and I still don't know where I stand on the subject, I don't know if this film has value, but Hunter's Life did.

Remember his life, in the time it takes you to watch his death.

I want to review this, to save other potential viewers from being taken in by the IMDb hype like I was.

I'm not quite positive what film some of these reviewers saw, but SYMPATHY FOR MR. VENGEANCE is not a masterpiece, it is not by any stretch of the imagination a 7, 8, 9, or a 10 level film (unless you've never seen a film before, than I could kind of understand how the magic of moving pictures might wow you. Sorry, usually leave sarcasm to other people, but some of your comments/raves are just baffling).

Neither is it particularly impressive in it's gore or horror, or anything else, though I see that's where the filmmaker was going. He's trying to troll in the footsteps of Takashi Miike, another filmmaker who mistakes excess for brilliance. Trying to grab those... who for some reason equate watching people suffer, with a great cinematic experience. As other reviewers have pointed out, there may be something quite not right about that.

Violence for violence's sake, when you don't particularly care about the characters is boring. When it's not part of some moral framework (the way Pekinpah did it, or Woo or Ford for that matter), when it doesn't move or elevate the story, such violence is excess. It is meaningless excess... and it bores people who ask more of their art... than watching people suffer. This film half way in, bored me.... and I stayed bored.

And the film is most definitely not the best Korean film ever, as one reviewer laudingly raved. MEMORIES OF MURDER starring the same leading actor, to name but one, is vastly superior to this.

So, I've said what this movie isn't, what is it? It is a... technically well directed film. I came in willing to like this movie, and you know what I did like the first half. The director knows how to place a camera, and knows how to stage a performance. It's a beautiful beginning, it reminded a lot of Requiem in its structure of scenes/conversations.

Where this film goes south is with the first death (and that's not a spoiler, I've yet to see a thriller where someone didn't die). Right there the film loses all cohesive sense, and it becomes from that point on a series of ludicrous choices, outlandish accidents, and wholly stupid motivations. From what started as a real sharp film, that seemed to be heading in dark but smart territory, it degenerates into a by the numbers, dull, predictable and empty... that says it best... empty film.

When the people you care about in a film check out early, and the others left are underdeveloped, or worse badly developed into characters you'd rather see gone, what's left? Waiting for the end credits to roll. The whole 2nd half including the ending, as another reviewer said, tried my patience, and did not reward that patience.

I have the DVD, if any of you fans want it. Bought it based on your reviews, you guys can have it cheap. This joins Natural Born Killers, Blair Witch and Dragon From Russia as one of the most over-hyped, and ultimately disappointing films I've seen. Final word?.... Check out the reviews of KS Kincaid, Phiggins,Tvalstar(even though I didn't like his Asian comment), Netflix, AKS6, and Kevv to catch movies you'll like better than this.

It's worth seeing.

That said it is neither the scariest, most terrifying, or any of the other hyperbole that the young and easily impressed, posting here, would attribute to it.

The first half does have a couple of very effective moments, moments of style. Nothing overt, nothing splashy, but just an unnatural moment... of dread, that if you let it... will hold you.

People complain of pacing problems, of flaws, of the film feeling unfinished. They are right, the 2nd half is all of that, has all of those failings, but is captivating anyway. As the dread and horror of the 1st half dissipates, and you are left with something both less and more, an explanation that is... not horrific but... haunting. That makes you think. And those who think its about the internet, don't get it. It's no more about the internet, than Jaws was about a boat. It's about dying, and living, and what happens when both become... finite. What happens when death is not enough.

I'm being cryptic. Cryptic is good when going into this movie. Go in to this movie, like you should to any movie, expecting nothing (spoiler free)and you may find in it... something... that lingers long after you see it.

A concept, an idea, that is sharp, and brilliant, and not fully explored. And perhaps, that's as it should be. Perhaps the film would have folded if the battleground was anyplace but in the viewers mind.

It's a very sharp, and haunting idea, that this film licks upon. And yes the ending stumbles, but not badly enough for you to really care... your mind is still toying with... possibilities.

A good film, redeemed by a great concept. Superior to the directors woefully overrated CURE. Worth the viewing. 8/10.

Richard Donner, after a beginning directing TV shows has made several fine movies, The Lethal Weapon Series, Omen, Toy, etc.

Without doubt this is his finest film, the film where it all jelled, all worked. A witty, funny, and oddly adult script, manages to continuously amuse and endear kids and adults of all ages. And of course a brilliant cast of newcomers and veterans, breathe life into this tale... of a Super Man.

First seen when it came out, when I was a wee kid, I remember it well. The first viewing. I remember, there with my family, Ma and Pa, and baby sis making noises somewhere, I remember loving it.

Being blown away by it.

I didn't know Glenn Ford or Trevor Howard or Jackie Cooper, I'd seen Brando on TV in old black and white movies, Reeves and Kidder were newcomers, all I really knew back then... was this movie was FUN. It was Superman... done right.

Nearly 3 decades later, and it is still... Superman done right. Knowledge and ever greater special effects does not dim my love for this film, it enhances it.

Now I do know who Jackie Cooper is, and Trevor Howard, and Glenn Ford, now I see how rich this movie is with a celebration and a respect of those who have come before. The original Lois Lane on the Train, Noel Neill.

There's a loving generational message here in the casting, that complements the generational message of the story. It also happens to have perhaps my favorite scene, visual scene, ever, the one I remember seeing ,in that theater of long ago, and thinking "Wow".

Photographed by the great Geoffrey Unsworth, who the film is dedicated to, the scene I'm referring to is the one with Clark and his mom in the cornfield, and the camera finally panning up, up, and away.

Thirty years later.... and it still takes my breath away. That and of course the now classic flight of Lois and Clark, around New York. To a preteen kid it felt like magic. And to an adult, far removed from that kid,it still feels... like magic.

It is easily... in a world that now has made a routine of Comic Book movies, the best of it's genre. But it's not just a great "comic book" movie, it's a great... movie. And that's why it was a box office hit, and that's why it remains, a perennial favorite. Like Peter Pan it speaks to us... of stars to reach for.

There's something absurdly hopeful; something tender and beautiful and endearing and hopeful about this film. Something ineffable that becomes, daily, ever more valuable... in a world that increasingly destroys all those things.

A brilliant film, with a compromised sequel that's almost as good (and two other sequels that you should avoid like the plague). A film that celebrates the medium and the myth, and that part in all of us... that dreams of flying. ****.

Just saw this film thanks in part to comments left on this site, avoiding the spoilers of course. Just wanted to give my take on the film, and some of the reviews on the film.

First if you haven't seen the film, simply put it's not just worth seeing, it's worth buying. It is a well performed, brilliantly photographed, hauntingly scored, and masterfully directed film.

That said it's often spoken of in the same breath as SWORD OF DOOM, and that is highly misleading. If you go in expecting the visceral, brilliantly choreographed sword fights and unrelenting action of that film, you will not find it here.

This is very much a drama, a morality tale of a time and a place; an exploration and an indictment of a way of life, and as such it has very few equals. The movie does lag, it is in many ways a monologue, one man talking more to himself than anyone else, of the ending of his life.

But an enthralling story, captivating visuals, and above all else, one of the most intriguing and effective soundscapes since the great Dimitri Tiomkin's work on 1950s DOA, keeps this static film... moving and engrossing.

Mentioning DOA, leads me to the bashing Hollywood takes regularly here from "critics" such as Landor28. Critics who in their rush to praise films, do it by backhanding other films. I'm not a critic, I'm just a reviewer. Critic implies you have some from the mountaintop perspective that gives you the right to criticize. Unless you've made movies, superior to what you're reviewing, you don't get to criticize. Review yes, criticize... no.

Has Hollywood made bad films? Yes Hollywood makes its share of bad films, so does Japan, so does India, so does Hong Kong, so does every other country that makes movies. However Hollywood makes the most films, the most visible films, and the largest films, so it is an easy lump-sum target as opposed to taking each film on its own merits. Hollywood in fact is judged harsher by these critics, held to a higher standard than films from elsewhere in the world.

I am no defender of Hollywood, as I don't work there, and not fortunate to know anyone who does, but I am a film fan, and a fan of the truth, and to praise films by Kurosawa and Kobayashi and to denigrate the films of Hollywood is to make a mistake these directors did not. These men, like all postwar filmmakers, were inspired by the films of Hollywood, particularly present in the work of all these directors is the large and brilliant work of John Ford.

Kurosawa would be the first to state this. Fords widescreen westerns are at the heart of the cinematic recreation of the Samurai. The samurai world as envisioned by Kurosawa as much about history as it is the heroic imagery of the western. They are Stagecoach and Searchers transplanted to the east.

A simplification to be sure, but not much of one. Postwar cinema in Japan and throughout the world copied from the states, and that's a good thing. And has started a trend that continues to this day of films successful in one country being copied in another. And we are the better for this two way copying. That's what film is people, copying.

Copying a headline, or a book, or a play, or another film, copying a moment and making it your own. That's what all art is, looking at something, copying something, a sunset, a tree, a woman, a birds cry, and adding your own... bleeding to it. That's all life is, being influenced by something people have bled on, and if we are great men, leaving our own blood on it... to influence others.

Only those with no art in their souls, don't see this. Only the very young, or the very stupid. Landor28 accuses Scorscese of stealing from Seppuku, an inane comment to make.

How many shots in Seppuku but reecho earlier brilliant compositions of Stroheim. But I don't hear you calling Kobayashi a thief. And rightly so, no one owns a shot. Cinema, and images belongs to the story that can tell it. And if that image or look, can service well a thousand films, than it should be used a thousand times. What is film noir, but the same type of look, and camera angles used repeatedly. But used from the directors own viewpoint, it becomes the director's tale. So the comment of theft shows someone ignorant of the fact that there is nothing new under the sun, there are just 7 stories and 5 angles; and all cinema since.... but each person retelling this story through the lens of their own joy or pain.

And if they are honest, the story each time... is worth hearing.

Give these directors, whether they work in India, or New Zealand or Kenya or Hollywood their due. Shymalan is a great director, Weir is a great director, Fincher is a great director, Carl Frankin is a great director, Lee is a great director, Zimmerman is a great director, Gibson (for Braveheart not Passion), Ron Howard is a great director, Edward Zwick is a great Director (his resume since 89 reads like a bloody history lesson of great films.) and they all work in Hollywood, and their work inspires all kinds of foreign flicks you do rave about.

Get off of Hollywood's back, it's always popular to hate the top dog, but it's also sometimes unwarranted.

SEPPUKU is a great film, by a master director. ***1/2 out of ****. If you like it also check out these films: GLORY (1989 Ed Zwick), COURAGE UNDER FIRE, A HERO NEVER DIES, KING OF NEW YORK, LE SAMOURAI, SWORD OF DOOM, BACKDRAFT, Excalibur, TUAREG, MENACE II SOCIETY.They are all films about, to one degree or another, displaced honor and cannibal societies.

Don't you hate it when the senile get on here and start babbling about potty training or whatever that last poster was going on about? Review the movie, and save the bloody speeches for your analyst! Can you say "off topic"?

Taking my own advice, a decent if overrated, and not entirely effective film. Of note primarily for being an early example of the Expose film. A "lost" film that's worth seeing if it's on, but not worth hunting down. Phil Karlson the director would go on to direct another true life expose of southern corruption, the far more mainstream, and popular, WALKING TALL. That's all I have to say, but because IMDb now stupidly requires a minimum line length, I have to fill up this space. So here goes, XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXx

The only reason I have cable is for Turner Classic Movies, and the chance to see, uncut, unedited, uninterrupted; flicks like this. The film is as stated very leisurely paced, but good (bordering on great) performances, a taut, very adult script, and an absolute joy of a soundtrack by the great Quincy Jones keep you watching. Makes this a leisurely stroll you enjoy taking. Listen to the music in the scenes between James Mason and his erstwhile wife [I won't even tell you what's going on between those two, it's just one of the most understated treatments of this subject, and that understatement gives it an outrageous power, as you are just completely agape at James Mason's... restraint] , Quincy is doing magical things. A movie where the parts, make the sum worth watching. Recommended.

An uneven movie, worth seeing if for nothing else segment#2 with the all-around great script, and great performances led by the always reliable Scatman Crothers. All the segments are reworkings of earlier episodes, but segment #2 is the most successful and touching of the quartet. The only one to be superior to the original television episode. The actor who plays the young Mr. Agee has the line of the movie, a paraphrasing of Shakespeare, "There is a destiny that shapes our ends, rough hewn though it may be.". Recommended for this episode. ** out of ****.

Simply put this is probably the finest movie you haven't seen. After an extremely limited engagement in the states this critically acclaimed film disappeared from the few theaters that were actually showing it. The loss is ours.

CITY OF GOD is what filmmaking is all about, not escapism but involvement, immersement, and hopefully a glimmer of understanding into too often bloody and incomprehensible worlds.

The story is ostensibly about gangs in Brazil, but its about so much more than that, it's about those places that are the price for our capitalist excess, places that pay the price for our new world order, it's about friendship, and love, and beauty, and innocence and how all these things fall away. It's part Robin Hood, and part Camelot, and part the world outside our door, and it is too much the blistering truth.

Young people are ultimately what they need to be to make it till tomorrow, what adults by our ineptness, our callousness, our carelessness, or our design force them to be. "Children are man at his strongest... they abide", if there is a truth to find in the brutal and beautiful images of this film, perhaps it's in that quote from NIGHT OF THE HUNTER. City of God is not just a stunning look at one place and one time, it is a look at Palestine, and Rwanda, Columbine, and Baltimore, it is all those places where our children do not just learn to kill, but learn to choose killing.

But if there is tragedy in THE CITY OF GOD, then there is also hope, and if there is ugliness there is also great beauty. It is, for such a seemingly violent movie, lushly, and lovingly photographed. It is a beautiful movie to look at, and that's part of it, part of the understanding the director(s) grants us, that in these distant slum lands where children slaughter children, there is beauty. Bone wrenching beauty, as beautiful as your child, your love, your sunset, beauty in the stories, and the striving... beauty even in the heart of horror and poverty.

CITY OF GOD tells a story yes, but more I think it pushes us out of our seats to find beauty, even in the things we've turned our backs on, because surely if Directors Katia Lund and Fernando Meirelles can find beauty in the CITY OF GOD, it should be a simple matter for us to find beauty... in our cities of men. A highly recommended flick. 9/10.

I'm convinced that movies that have SHADOW in the title have a better than average chance of being good flicks. This flick SHADOW ON THE WALL upholds that little axiom. It starts slow, but stick with it, it picks up steam quickly.

This one eschews the normal trappings of noir, such as the seedy private eye, and the femme fatale while maintaining the stark cinematography and riveting suspense. Ann Sothern turning in a surprising performance, always the good girl in movies, here the director plays on that, to create a character whose actions becomes ever more... egregious. And because she is so much one of us, one of the good people, we are carried along... with her fall.

A movie that ultimately revolves around four women as central characters, would hardly seem to fit the noirish mold, but this film is far less lifetime network and far more grim, and gritty. The only foray into the the world of Noir by its director Pat Jackson, and the only script ever done by its writer Hannah Lees, the movie is deserving of far more recognition than its received. A solid little thriller. *** out of **** stars.

I went into this flick because a couple different reviews and reviewers pointed me in that direction. I'm not a critic, I don't waste a lot of time disecting the bad, I prefer to spend time praising the good.

So I'll be brief.

This movie will probably appeal to the same segment who thought Blair Witch was original and good. And like Blair Witch this movie is neither. If you've opened a sci-fi book in the last fifty years, the concepts touched on are less than revolutionary, and even the mixing of disparite genres handled far better elsewhere, one movie that comes to mind is SIGNS. Or even the films of David Fincher, this idea of pieces coming together, of everything having meaning is a capable idea, in the hands of acapable script and director.

An idea that kept running through my head, triggered by certain scenes in the film, is how derivitive DONNIE DARKO is of better movies. Sometimes an ambiguous story isn't the mark of a brilliant director, and a witty script, sometimes it's just uneven filmmaking. It's just an inability to put on the stage, the ideas on the page. Many reviewers have said, well get the DVD, because the notes from the book really explain it, and I have to chuckle softly, because I realize that perhaps a movie that requires crib notes... isn't really that cohesive of a movie.

People are quick to slam hollywood movies, and praise indie movies, often simply because they are labeled "indie" movie.

Some hollywood movies are bad, some are brillant. Some Indie movies are brilliant, and some are... empty. DD is an empty movie. People argue about Tangent Universes, and Premonitional Dreams, and ultimately if a movie lacks heart, if you don't care about the characters, who cares what happens to them? Whether their world ends? And ultimately that's the failing of Donnie Darko, Drew Barrymore mentions apathy, and that descibes the failings of this flick as well as any.

You don't learn to care for the characters, so why worry about their world coming to the end? While the director shows capabiity moving the camera, the glaring/cynical looks of the lead [his distuberd/homicidal look maybe?] after the fourth or fifth glare left me hoping 10 or 12 jets fell on his head.

Condemn Hollywood movies if you choose, but like most prejudice, you condemn the good with the bad, because Hollywood at its best, its LAWRENCE OF ARABIAs, its LION IN WINTERS, its UNTOUCHABLES, its BRAVEHEARTS gives us works that speak to the heart, and I will take that any day over this new self-indulgent indie cinema that speaks only to the hubris[That said there are directors doing great things in the Indie Field, THE SWEET HEREAFTER popping immediately to mind, a movie that has all the heartrending emotional energy and interest, that this film lacks].

Donnie Darko like Blair Witch is an exercise, a preamble to a film, that would make a decent short flick on the Indie Film circuit, but blown up to feature length, the cracks shown... and the holes become... apparent.

** out of ****.

With three major movies under his belt M. Night Shyamalan has quickly made a name for himself as one of the premier directors of the budding 21st century. Not since the relatively recent works of David Fincher have I been so taken and impressed with a director's vision, his output. And Signs, a relatively small, claustrophobic flick, even more so than Shyamalan's previous two, is somehow all the more powerful, and explosive, and ultimately rewarding for this sense of isolation. It is a brilliantly structured film. Fincher and Shyamalan are called the Hitchcocks of a brave new day, and I consider that praise well deserved for both directors.

But Shyamalan's works are too uniquely his own, too uniquely genre and classification defying, to be summed up with the word hitchcockian. Shyamalan tells movies, that walk the dark hinterlands of the human heart and imagination. His works are neither thrillers, nor sci-fi, nor drama, nor horror, nor strictly fantasy but are some new and strange stew of elements. His works refuse to be pigeon-holed.

And that, as you can tell has made him fans, but that has also in a world that lives and dies by labels has made him detractors. People have the right to like and dislike, what they want. But in some of the negative posts here, the venom and attacks seem almost personal. Less attacks on the work, than attacks on the idea of the work. A film is fantasy people, the best film requires your willingness to be fooled, to help suspend disbelief. It just seems a lot of you go into a Shyamalan film looking for flaws, as if you're offended personaly because his movies are so well received, and are looking to tear it down, lookin to fight the movie, and I'm going to tell you right now, a movie that you want to hate, you'll hate. A movie is like a date, its better when both parties try to make it work.

You go into Signs wanting to read the signposts, and you will find a delicate, beautiful, haunting and brilliantly directed film, and yes it has a message. And yes there is a wide doe-eyed, capraesque quality to the films of Shyamalan. A vein of hope and humanity, a belief in them that runs through his works. And for me that's what makes his work masterpieces. I tend to think everything, everything has a message, from the most innane slasher flick, to the stupidest comedy, everything has a message, most messages translate into follow the crowd, or be as dumb as you want to be, or shoot the other guy, but Shyamalan presents us, in the case of Signs, a much more layered message. The ending if you let it, will hit you like a truck stop, will build on you, will grow on you, and will stay with you long, long after you leave the theater. It's the work of a master craftsman, no moment wasted.

And great kudos must be given to the brilliant soundtrack by James Newton Howard, track 5 "Brazil" ranks up there with Goblin's "Mad Puppet" as one of the great horror compositions.

Ranks perfectly between Sixth Sense and Unbreakable. 9/10. One of my favorite films of 2002. And looking forward to his next film. M. Night keep up the great work.