Reviews

Off the Hook tells the true story of two aspiring rappers who have formed a duo called PosNeg. One of the men, Walter Velasquez, is the Positive side. His rap lyrics have uplifting themes and he has focus and determination in his everyday life to keep things peaceful, stay out of trouble, and succeed.

The other rapper, Lorenzo Lewis, is the negative side, not only in lyrical content but in his lifestyle. He is always having to prove how hard he and can't stay away from legal troubles involving drugs and such.

The look and sound of the film make it obvious that this was done on a very low budget, and considering that, the acting is top-notch. There are many brilliant performances here by complete unknowns. I found myself very sucked in to the world of PosNeg. It's a shame that so few people have seen this film.

Off the Hook tells the true story of two aspiring rappers who have formed a duo called PosNeg. One of the men, Walter Valesquez, is the Positive side. His rap lyrics have uplifting themes and he has focus and determination in his everyday life to keep things peaceful, stay out of trouble, and succeed.

The other rapper, Lorenzo Lewis, is the negative side, not only in lyrical content but in his lifestyle. He is always having to prove how hard he and can't stay away from legal troubles involving drugs and such.

The look and sound of the film make it obvious that this was done on a very low budget, and considering that, the acting is top-notch. There are many brilliant performances here by complete unknowns. I found myself very sucked in to the world of PosNeg. It's a shame that so few people have seen this film.

I found this film to be incredible. The performances are outstanding, and most of the violence in it is impeccably realistic. I found that it was very easy to forget that I was watching something that was acted and scripted. Being a big fan of hood films like Boyz N The Hood, Menace II Society, Colors, Juice, etc., I found this film to be a total reinvention of the genre. Through the video camera, we become Kris, an young teenager who aspires to be like the older husslers he looks up to. Many of the scenes in this wouldn't work if the film was shot like a normal film and worked on a more conventional dramatic scale, but because it has the home movie feel, we are allowed to just see little moments here and there that provide a great deal of character development w/o even trying. While the hood movie has been done over and over again, this one really made an impact on me, mainly because of the performances. There's plenty of humor, action (but not glossy flashy Hollywood action), drama, and cursing. Enough for the whole family to enjoy.

Jason X is an entertaining blend of horror, sci-fi and comedy, though the film doesn't go very far in any of the three categories alone. The best way to view this film is to simply not expect it to deliver anything and just sit back and enjoy it for what it is: a slasher flick! And for being that, it is quite amusing. The comedy in the film does succeed considerably more than other slasher flicks which try to incorporate comedy into the mix. At least I thought so. Really, I just enjoyed this film cuz I had nothing better to do when I watched it and was in the mood for something... well, stupid. That's what it is, and for being stupid, it's fun. Sometimes it's fun to be dumb. 6/10

I feel a bit strange giving Dressed to Kill a 5 out of 10 vote, because there is plenty of brilliance found within the film, particularly the direction and style (not a surprise since it's DePalma), and there are a great deal of moments in it which are spectacular, like the scene where Angie Dickinson wanders about the art gallery in search of love. But honestly, I didn't find the story to be all that intriguing and never really felt like I cared for the characters. Plus, I personally didn't think there were many surprises in the film. Based on DePalma's endless Hitchcock homages, I had a lot of the surprises figured out long before they were revealed. Don't get me wrong. I love DePalma films and think he does some of the coolest homages, especially the Battleship Potemkin moment in The Untouchables. I just didn't think this was one of his better films, though it was definitely worth watching and there were plenty of great moments in it. I might even watch it again eventually to revisit some of the scenes in it, and hey, maybe I'd even get DePalma's intent by viewing it a second time. Upon first viewing, I just don't feel Dressed to Kill amounted to much as a whole.

I feel a bit strange giving Dressed to Kill a 5 out of 10 vote, because there is plenty of brilliance found within the film, particularly the execution of direction and style (not a surprise since it's DePalma), and there's a great deal of moments in it which are spectacular. But honestly, I didn't find the story to be all that intriguing and never really felt like I cared for the characters. Plus, I personally didn't think there was many surprises in the film. Based on DePalma's endless Hitchcock homages, I had a lot of the surprises figured out long before they were revealed. Don't get me wrong. I love DePalma films and think he does some of the coolest homages, especially the Battleship Potemkin moment in The Untouchables. I just didn't think this was one of his better films, though it was definitely worth watching and there were plenty of great moments of it. I might even watch it again eventually to revisit some of the scenes in it, and hey, maybe I'd even get DePalma's intent by viewing it a second time. Upon first viewing, I just don't feel Dressed to Kill amounted to much as a whole.

Some films that rely on cliches and one dimensional characters are amusing for this reason because the filmmakers are aware of the fact that there is not much depth to these characters and don't take them too seriously. This is not the case with Crime and Punishment in Suburbia, which not only relies on cliches and one dimensional characters, but can't seem to manage to find a way to bring the viewer into the story or even tell a story.

There is the voyeuristic pariah who is misunderstood, a character who it seems as though the film is trying to build a mystique around, but he never does anything all that interesting or noteworthy. He just goes around taking photographs of people without their knowing it, and the entire time it is very reminiscent of the kid who filmed everything in American Beauty, which had been released just one year prior to this. They've got the alcoholic father, who you know is going to be trouble, and sure enough, he is. There is the jock tough guy who is dating the the drunks' daughter, and bullies around the voyeuristic pariah as we've seen a billion times before. However, the jock tough guy ends up being a bit more of a dynamic character once the plot finally enters the film (about an hour into it), and it's a hackneyed plot. The drunks' daughter is a very bland character that does nothing interesting, yet we are forced to spend most of the film with her. It's brutally boring. I don't feel as though it is worth spending any more time describing this film, for it is poorly written, horribly acted, weak in concept, and should not be named after the Dostoyevsky novel that it is loosely based on, not because it deviates so much from the book but because rubbish like this should not be associated with a work of genius like "Crime and Punishment." 1/10

After what's seem like an eternity, Quentin Tarantino finally returns with his sendup to the grindhouse films (as well as plenty of other styles) in Kill Bill. While the movies plot is relatively simple and much easier to summarize than any of Tarantino's previous films, that doesn't make it any less enjoyable. It is a departure in many ways; Volume I contains considerably less dialog-focused character development than any of his other films. The action and violence is at the front of this flick. Tarantino once described Reservoir Dogs as seeming a lot more violent than it actually was because of the threat of violence that looms over each scene, and there were actually only a handful of occasions where violent acts actually occurred. With Kill Bill, there is so much violence that it seems awkward when there is downtime. In a scene where Uma Thurman visits Japan and is having a fun little chat with the propriater of a restauraunt/bar (there may be a term for such an establishment in Japanese that I am missing), Uma is all cutesy and fun, and it's hard to believe she's the same woman dicing up punk after punk in the rest of the film. The word awkward is a bad choice, as it tends to have bad connotations. There is nothing wrong with the non-action packed scenes in this film. Speaking of action packed, this film is packed with action! There have been complaints that Tarantino is not a very good action director. Well, the morons who say that don't realize HE'S NOT AN ACTION MOVIE MAKER! They were much more dramas with occasional acts of violence that didn't require explosions and ellaborate action sequences. But Kill Bill is an action film, and Tarantino directs it brilliantly. There is also a great deal of variation in how the action is executed and revealed. Every blood-soaked moment is a surprise. This is also Tarantino's most artistic film today, employing everything from black-and-white scenes (which may have been due to the excessive blood), animation, birds eye shots, oblique angles (there are far less long shots in this film, the story is divided into title chapters, the pace is much faster than the usual Tarantino style, probably cuz there's so many people to kill and so little time), and the scene where Uma Thurman and Lucy Liu have a one-on-one sword battle is film in a beautiful Japanese garden in the snow. Amazing mise en scene. It really reads like a graphic novel, a comic book. It might not be the deepest Tarantino film, but it is certainly the most epic. And there's still another hour and a half to go. I can't wait!

This film was in the cult section at the local video store, and I've come to find that "cult" films are often one of two things. They are either masterpieces which are over-the-top/bizarre/cryptic/left-of-center and can be watched again and again, or they are very lame films with little-to-no redeeming qualities which have gained a cult following because people get a kick out of unintentionally bad films. This film falls into the latter category. I can't imagine anyone would think this was actually a decent film. Everything about it is lame. The best (best meaning worst in this case) part of the film was when one of the men escaped from the biker gang, got a car, and drove into town to the police station. When he comes into the police station, he's out-of-breath and fatigued. Wasn't he just driving? He's worn out from driving? This film is awful.

1/10

I rented this in hopes of seeing, at the least, a film with some memorable lines or fun moments, and hoped that possibly I was stumbling across an underrated, obscure gem. I didn't even get any memorable lines or fun moments. It seems that what the film is trying to do is show a feminist view of sex, but the viewpoint doesn't go very deep or really seem that intriguing. It hardly even makes sense. The characters don't do much to support this attempt at deepness, and the acting is lousy all around. One of the main girls is trying her best to be an Angelina Jolie type, but she has zero charisma or screen presence. I think the best acting in the film was from a minor female character in a bar that one of the male characters was trying to pick up, and she had about three lines. Seriously, the acting is that noticeably bad. Thora Birch must be trying to earn indie cred by appearing in this right around the time her career was taking off, and she does have one of the better moments towards the beginning involving playing a Russian roulette-type game with an almost completely loaded gun, but the fact that the gun is loaded is the only fascinating part about this scene because her acting isn't particularly stellar. Dominique Swain doesn't even shine at all, and she has definitely saved some films I've seen in the past. The pot smoking seemed like a gimmick tacked onto the film. It's a shame. This movie looks good on paper, but suffers from weakness factoring in from all aspects that go into the making of it.

All Over Me is a film that isn't so much about telling a story as much as it is about feelings and emotions within the characters that are not so obvious at first. The intentions and desires of the characters unfolds as the movie progresses at a very slow pace, and the dialog is intentionally bland, not sharp in any way, as if it was real life. There is no attempt by the filmmaker or actors to make this look like it is a movie, beyond some rather artsy shots here and there. It is simply a window into a young girls life and the small, confused, somewhat corrupted world that surrounds her while she is making another transition in her development in life. This is a very subtle film with very few shifts in tone. The action that leads to the most drastic shift in the film is not even seen, only talked about later on. Even the more climatic moments result in not much happening, though tension does build on a number of occasions. The acting is top notch. In fact, the acting is so superb that it almost makes me wish that the script had just a little more zing to it since the actors could have definitely pulled off some colorful dialog and made for some classic scenes. Regardless of that, All over Me is a good enough film, though if you can't get into the characters or want to see a movie that feels like a movie and not a documentation of life, you won't dig it.

There are as many exhilirating, edge-of-your-seat moments in Jeepers Creepers as there are cliched, hum drum Hollywood horror moments, and it is the former that makes the latter seem all that worse. Let's start off with the good stuff. The first half hour of the film is undoubtedly the most promising setup that I have seen in a horror flick in quite a long time. There are some wicked-awesome shots employed and the tension is crafted perfectly. There is some nice yack-yack between the bro and sis, to boot (even if it is a bit runny at times). And what the brother and sister discover is truly disturbing. Unfortunately, this is where everything falls. With all of the directions that the movie could have taken at this point, the writer/director chose to go for the freaky/crazy, rather than the more subtle, psychological build up that the first hour both executes and promises. I felt blue balled. By the last half hour, I felt like shutting the film off, but decided that I should stick with it only because the first half was so gnarly.

You decide for youself. 7/10 ONLY because the intro is some of the strongest horror I've seen since Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

With gratuitous gore (seriously, it gets rough) and a plethora of punchy (though campy) dialogue, Waxworks is a fine slab of visceral cinema. The camera angles and mise en scene are more artistic than usual for horror films, and the sets from all of the different periods that victims are taken to are convincing enough. Hey, it even has that guy from Sliders and Indiana Jones who always said: "INDIE!" playing a werewolf in it. It doesn't get better than that!

I'll betcha I watched this film 25 times when I was 11 or 12. I actually didn't get into G. I. Joe at a very young age like many people from my generation. I was always more a Star Wars and Ninja Turtles kinda guy (kid). Somewhere along the line, I was introduced to the Marvel Comics G.I. Joe saga and realized just how genius and complex the storyline was. Larry Hama (whom can be found on this site for the three or four things he's acted in) is an excellent writer and I wish he'd work on more. However, the cartoon was always far less superior to the comic, and even this, which is one of the better stories for the cartoon, is not even close to the comic. Still, I believe any person who was a fan of G.I. Joe growing up might get a kick out of watching this. It is available on DVD now, though I have to wonder how easy it is to find. A little known fact about this film is that Duke originally died from Serpentor's snake. Larry Hama never liked the Duke character and Hasbro gave the cartoonists permission to kill off the character. However, the public outcry from Optimus Primes death in the Transformers film forced the filmmakers to alter the dialog so that it would say he went into a coma.

I do not believe I have ever seen a film that comes anywhere close to "Ponette" before. While I would not consider it my favorite film that I could watch over and over and over, it is easily one of the stronger movies I have seen. Rarely do I view a film that is so precise and cohesive even though it simultaneously plays off so many different themes, like sentimentallity, nostalgia (we all remember the strange social world of the playground though maybe some of us don't want to go back), the pain of loss, and (gasp) humor. Most directors and actors would get lost at one point or another, not knowing how to segue or shift from one tone to another, but here there is nary a problem with doing so, which is especially amazing considering the leading lady has been walking and talking for about as long as it takes to make a bowl of oatmeal.

The best scenes for me were the trials that the older girl put Ponette through. The dumpster one was especially great. Considering that early on in the film I sympathized with Ponette when she cried during some scenes, I felt bad laughing at her suffering through the tests, especially when her hand got caught when the dumpster lid came down. I believe some of this movie was improv, so for all I know, the poor girl really got her hand hurt, but I remember those type of moments as a child; those tests of stamina, durability, agility, etc. I put my younger brother through some horrific ones. One time he broke his arm. How could I have been so cruel?

A performance artist/singer named Suran Song recommended I watch this film. In Suran's performance, she actually uses slides of the scene where the mean little punk Antoine is playing with Ponette on the playground and begins to verbally abuse her about her mothers death. The context Suran used the scene in her act seemed to be making a statement about how people treat others in society, even when very young. Interesting how she sort of sampled an individual scene and made it into a story of her own, because it plays much differently in the film as a whole (obviously) since we know the characters.

Probably not for everyone, but certainly for those who want to a see a piece of work very left-of-center yet not oddball in any way; simply a viewpoint that wouldn't normally seem worth making an entire feature film out of because it would be hard to pull off. Ponette is not only pulled off... it goes flying to the moon.

While it is true that Nail Gun Massacre is a true insult to celluloid due to its lack of anything remotely well done, well acted, well framed, well planned, well edited, etc., I've found that if you pretend it is intentionally bad, it starts to have some redeeming qualities. The one-liners are so lame and include horrible puns, and I laugh like a mad man every time I hear them. The killings have absolutely no element of surprise to them; you're given at least 30 seconds of warning before the soon-to-be victims see the nail gun killer, and once they've seen him, he usually interacts with them in a poor, poor manner that would not be intimidating. While most slasher film fans don't really care about getting into characters and just want to see each and every person killed off, I find that I like to select a few characters to root for each time, hoping they make it alive. With the exception of the doctor and the sheriff or whatever they are supposed to be, it seems there are no constant, recurring characters in this film. When you are introduced to a character, that means they are toast. Great way to make you care about the characters and have a reason to care if they are dying, huh? Still, this movie is perfect to sit around with a couple of buddies, play drinking games if you like, and just laugh at all of the bad lines, unnecessary nudity, and hilariously bad special effects. 10/10 just cuz I can't bring myself to not plug this piece of snot.

Though I was expecting this film to focus more on the girls goofing around after graduation, getting into situations both realistically bland and cinematically adventuruous, I was still happy to see a film like this get made, and I loved it to death. The main characters didn't have to do much for me to understand where they were coming from, even the complicated Enid (Thora Birch), who seems to be a mix of Daria from Beavis and Butthead and Sheena, the punk rocker from the Ramones song. Scarlett Johannson manages to put in a very straightforward performance that plays off of Thora Birch nicely, and of course Steve Buscemi RULES (two metal signs up) in his part here. Sadly, I could relate to his character all too well, even though I'm not nearly his age yet. Illeana Douglass is also great as the eccentric art teacher. Hell, everyone in this film is great. And though I wasn't a big fan of Rushmore, I can see this being considered a Rushmore for girls... though I think guys might get even more of a kick watching these two lassies parade around in rather revealing outfits. But anyway, 10/10. This film didn't disappoint at all.

This was the second movie by Tarantino that I ever saw, the first being 'Reservoir Dogs'. After having been amazed by every second of 'Reservoir Dogs' (pop culture references, great dilaogue, cool minimalistic action, unconventional character development), 'Jackie Brown' seemed very bland, and dragged on way too long. I was younger then and hungry for brain candy rather than any real themes, especially about getting old and not having anything to show for it. So I labeled this proof that Tarantino could make a mediocre film. Now, after a second viewing, a few years and many lessons and heartbreaks and shattered dreams and heavy depressions later, this film really spoke to me. This is a much more subtle film than any of the others Tarantino has been involved in. The characters don't babble on about meaningless topics to no avail, but rather they speak about their desires and ambitions, and often not very in depth. There is a lot about these characters that we have to figure out by reading the little there is on the surface, but they seem less contrived. In Reservoir Dogs, each character is built up to be a certain type so that they can play a certain role in the crumbling of the jewel heist. Here in 'Jackie Brown' we often haven't pinned down what a character is like until after they've acted. The relationship between DeNiro and Fonda's characters is especially interesting because they do a complete turnaround in their attitudes towards eachother, even though DeNiro's performance wasn't one of his better outtings. Grier and Forster manage a mostly platonic interracial relationship that we do not see very often, even in modern cinema. Tarantino shows signs of maturing visually here as well, especially the shot he uses for the demise of Beaumont, but I don't want to reveal anything for those who've not seen it. Anyway, 9/10.

I watched this in my Film Communication class earlier today. I went into it with a pretty good idea of what Jackson Pollock is all about, all his abstract expressionism and texture and such, so I expected the film would be done with lots of wacky fantasy sequences and abstract Lynch-like non-linear b.s., a technique that many directors seem to think brings us closer into the characters mentality (see Oliver Stone's "The Doors"). I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was nothing of the sort. In fact, many scenes are made up of one long take with no cuts. It shows that Ed Harris is an actor who is directing because there seems a great focus on the performance and subtext, if subtext can be focused on. He does a decent job, though. Considering how slow paced and rather uneventful much of the film is, I found myself staying interested in what happened. Pollock is such an anti-social and depressive (not manic depressive) type with no control over his anger, or his cigarette smoking. It's inspiring to know that someone with as little charisma, let alone personality, who leads such a bland life (with the exception of his revolutionary painting) can be legendary. This film doesn't make one romanticize being a painter; it just shows one man's rather flipped out journey through being a famous painter without even really trying. There is some nice mise en scene in the scenes of Pollock painting and some crafty camera work, such as hand held cameras following characters around (slightly nauseating but not too shaky) and even a tracking-zooming shot, something I see once every blue moon. There's even a character with a camera following Pollick around attempting to make some cinema varite but he immediately violates the rules of cinema varite by telling Pollock what to do, step by step, while he's filming Pollock paint, which leads to one of the funniest and most dramatic scenes in the film. The performances are all solid, even though none of these characters are. Just don't expect the power to be from the few stars who are in here (Val Kilmer and Jennifer Connelly) cuz they are probably on screen for 10 minutes combined. They're more just cameos. Oh, and look for Bud Cort, star of Harold & Maude, Bernice Gets Her Hair Bobbed and Dogma. hahaha.

I found this film to hold up by todays standards. The robbery scene is exceptionally genius. But I don't want to reveal anything. Just see it if you like crime movies. It's up there with the best crime films of all time. 10/10

Watching this film helped me understand that all you need to make a good film is an imagination and a couple of bucks. I felt that every bit of this movie was excellent (hard to tell with the acting cuz I don't speak spanish and can't tell how *scripted* it sounds from their mouths). Just watch and learn how unnecessary big budgets are.

Army of Darkness is one of those films I can go back and watch endlessly and continue to find entertaining and amazing every time. If you complain about the archaic special effects, then you've got no respect for the type of budget these people were fighting against to make as awesome of action sequences as they possibly could. This film has got enough one-liners to make Jimmy Pop Ali look like a Carrot Top act (if that wasn't an obscure enough reference). If you haven't seen it, check it out and be wowed. Course, I don't see why you'd be reading this if you haven't seen it (that is unless you're a Bridget Fonda fan finding out info on movies of hers you've never seen nor heard of... she plays a HUGE role in this movie so watch it for her best performance ever... MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!)

Everything in this film just seems to come together to create the perfect horror movie, complete with dark comedy elements. From the locations of the film to the props and sets to the cast to the grainy quality of the film, almost like a documentary, it just all flows so well. On repeated viewings of both the entire movie and specific scenes, I am always enchanted. The DVD of this film is excellent, the restoration of picture and the audio commentary from Tobe Hooper, Gunnar Hansen and David, as well as many of the other features, they're all awesome. However, the house interior shots on the restored version are a bit dark, they lose the VHS masters quality of weirdness a bit, so check that out if you haven't seen it. A beautiful horror movie, one that I will always keep coming back to as my favorite.

There is no denying that this movie is hilarious on first viewing and contains a great deal of good one-liners and balls out (sometimes literally) disgusting humor. However, for Kevin Smith, it seems to be a step down and a bit of a cheap shot. Here is a man who has brought us 4 movies who dared to go against the flashy special effects 90s and rely on clever dialogue to carry them, and it worked. I was never as much a fan of laughing during Smith's films as much as I was finding them cleverly crafted pieces of work that I could take something with me due to their insight. I even found something in Mallrats (the Brodie character... who wouldn't want to either be him or hang out with him). This movie is a lot more of an American Pie/Something About Mary gross out marathon without any real dialog that delivers power... and the story is pointless. Not a very fitting conclusion to one of my favorite "trilogies" of all-time... it was up there with Star Wars, Back To The Future and Indiana Jones... maybe still is... if only he could have made a more powerful film to close it. Ah well. Still it's good for belly laughs.