Reviews

I'm the type of moviegoer who loves a full story, full of complexity and intertwining characters and events, with plenty of twists. I love De Niro and Coppola, films like "The Godfather, Parts I and II" or "Apocalypse Now" and "Casino", "Goodfellas" and the recent "The Departed" are my type of film. So imagine the anticipation I felt going into "The Good Shepherd." Two hours and forty minutes later, I left the theatre wondering, "Why?".

This film should be great, considering the players involved and the underlying material, the very formation and evolution of the CIA. Instead, this movie is a mishmash of conversations that go nowhere and plot-points that get developed only to fade away and never come to fruition. The climactic question, who within The Company gave intel to the Soviets re: Bay of Pigs, reaches a conclusion that should be earth shattering, but, like the rest of the film, falls flat. Several scenes, in fact, are wholly undeveloped and therefore unnecessary - one leaves asking, "And why was that part in the movie?" The cast is one of Oscar dreams - Damon, Jolie, De Niro himself, Alec Baldwin, Joe Pesci. But many of these names are only on the screen for a few minutes at best (e.g. Joe Pesci has one, brief scene). Damon's character, the focus of the film, is infamous for his stony silence and impenetrability - and on this he unfortunately delivers. He is emotionless and personality free - a protagonist such as this must be carefully done, and Damon doesn't do it in a way to be interesting.

As I said, I enjoy complexity - I don't need explosions and CGI to enjoy a film (in fact, those tend to come at the expense of true story and character development and therefore detract from a film). However, this movie had faux complexity at best - and in the end was merely an overly-long, boring exploration of a fascinating subject. The Emperor has no clothes.

I don't expect this review to change anyone's mind about seeing the film - if you like the "Saw" franchise you're going to see this movie as well - no review will stop you. But, as one who has seen every installment, I found this incredibly disappointing.

First and foremost, the very premise of the franchise, (damn thin to begin with), is made even more thin, while at the same time nothing new is introduced. Nothing. There is no new creative twist, just once again Jigsaw (through his protégé') getting all preachy to a new host of victims about how they had "every advantage" and didn't live up to (his) expectations, so now he's going to teach them something-or-other.

In this film in particular, Jigsaw rings rather preachy and even more so, absolutely hypocritical (for instance, Saw puts the main victim through the paces to teach said victim "how to forgive" - great lesson coming from a guy who blames the world for his terminal illness. Doctor, heal thyself!). Of course (not that this was different in Saw I or II) gore replaces horror, and there is absolutely no suspense. Given the story-line, I'd even call this one "dull" - even by comparisons to I and II. I was actually leaning my head on my hand, much of the way through - it is indeed a maddingly dull plot.

The film-makers definitely believe their audience is a rather stupid lot. The whole background is re-told more than once, with a liberal amount of repeat footage. Your average film-goer can make the connections in Saw III but apparently the directors thought we needed a Cliffnotes encapsulation.

So again, not like anyone looking forward to this movie is going to change their minds, but don't expect anything new, don't expect creativity, don't expect suspense or horror. Expect a few clever (apparently Jigsaw holds an engineering degree from Carnegie Mellon or something) torture devices and the same, re-hashed storyline, driven into the ground as well as into the audiences' heads, the dullards we are.

Well, after seeing this whiskey-tango-foxtrot of a movie I found out later it was based on a video game. Well, that explains a lot, since most of the film resembles a video game, with the lead character running through mazes/levels trying to find her daughter. But what is admittedly a very visually-satisfying film suffers from a lack of coherence and stupidity on a scale so massive, you don't know what you just saw and, frankly, you don't care! The film starts with the girl who suffers from sleep-walking and finds herself on the edge of a huge cliff (???). Her parents rescue her while the girl, in a sleep-state, shouts over and over "Silent Hill!" (in a not too convincing manner...the acting is, well, abysmal). This plot development takes literally 90 seconds of the film. Bingo-bango, her mom is taking her to, yep, Silent Hill! That'll cure her! This journey begins not two minutes into the movie. On the way, a motorcycle cop stops the mom. Mom pulls over. Cop approaches car. Mom immediately GUNS THE CAR AND TAKES OFF. Why? What human would do this for no apparent reason? I guess we're not to ponder this question. Mom is now (on a rainy, unfamiliar road, mind you) driving break-neck speed towards Silent Hill (a ghost-town in WV) and...get this...crashes full speed through a chain-locked barricade. Again...huh? WTF? Of course, she crashes the car and when waking up, daughter is gone and she finds herself right smack dab in the middle of ash-rain ghost-town alternate-universe what-the-you-know Silent Hill.

Now the movie is square into video-game mode. Our heroine (mom) sees a fleeting glimpse of a girl in a building. Mom enters (unfamiliar) building. Mom (with the aid of a single cigarette-lighter which never runs out of fuel or dies) proceeds to work her way through an unending maze which no sane person would ever find themselves able to back-track. Why? Heck, we've been asking ourselves this for the last (check the watch) 20 minutes! Mom encounters several scary looking creatures, surroundings, menacing-sounding civil-defense sirens, etc.

Oh yeah, the motorcycle cop arrives and hand-cuffs mom, after explaining that she dumped her bike a bit back (now we're starting to think, oh, I know, everyone is dead!)...both meet some mad, old woman who spouts out some pseudo-cryptic-occultish gibberish...more running through different buildings (you know, like levels of a video game)...they meet various "bosses"...run some more...get "keys" and other clue pieces...

..this goes on for two-and-a-half-friggin' hours. And then in the end there is some more psycho-babble about evil and witches and "not one of us" and the townspeople (???) try and burn the girl but the girl has a spirit double who IS evil and wreaks havoc on the townspeople (who are....dead? alternate universe? who cares!).

And in the end mom and daughter get back in the SUV, leave Silent Hill and get home...but is it home (I mean, dad has been home the whole time and he's alone and everything looks...real. Mom and daughter are in the home but...everything is kinda foggy and ethereal, like it's home but in an alternate universe? Dead?)...

Whatever! The three stars I give this are STRICTLY for the stunning visual graphics. Yet graphics a film do not make. Buy the game (sounds cool!) avoid the movie and and thank me later.

I'm one of those moviegoers who has the opinion that, 1) the book is always better than the movie and, 2) the original is better than the remake. Having said that, of ANY remake I've seen, this was is best at recapturing the suspense and pure violence of the original, and maybe in some ways better (given the improved budget).

First I will say what is good about this movie. The suspense and violence is unrelentless. The original did a great job of not only using gore/violence, but pure suspense (a lone trailer in the middle of a pitch-black desert surrounded by an enemy that is unknown and unseen). The remake re-captures that well, unlike many that just up the gore factor with no heed to suspense. Second, the violence, when it does occur (and oh, it does!) is chilling. This movie makes the remake of "TCM" look like a romantic comedy. Additionally and perhaps paradoxically, the movie also takes time to "mourn" the victims, showing the emotional impact of their demise on their family. So there is a real human element there, which makes one care...somewhat. Last, this movie uses it's increased budget and special-effects abilities smartly, creating a very plausible landscape and setting for the violence. The portrayal of a insane and mutated "family" living in an old prop-town (used as a prop for testing the effects of nuclear explosions) is very haunting.

Having said all that, this movie does suffer a bit. First off, since most of these movies seem to cater to the younger crowd, we have your uber-annoying pair of teenage jerkholes (the son and daughter). The teenage boy is ESPECIALLY annoying and I prayed every minute for his death. His death SHOULD have come very quickly, due to his stupidity and to the situation he got himself into early on which, given the entire premise of the film, should have guaranteed his corpse status. Again, it seems horror films do a poorer-than-most job at creating characters you WANT to see live. Also, there are the usual incredible holes in the story. How a cell-phone salesman who looks like he's never seen a bike or weight-set in his life ends up single-handedly killing nearly the entire clan - including besting a 300 lb. insanely violent giant of a mutant in hand-to-hand combat - is impossible to imagine. How the boy and girl, who are the most inept, incompetent and weakest characters in the entire film, turn into a pair of virtual McGuyvers and best their foes, is equally incredible.

But oh well. Take it for what it's worth and if you're a horror fan, even of the original, you won't be too disappointed. As horror films go, the best in quite a while.

I found the film to be very lifeless and dull. I was intrigued by the multi-channel distribution and, of course, the name attached to this film (even though I was not a fan of "Traffic" either). But what is so groundbreaking about filming what many of us have witnessed ourselves? I went through my college summers being a "short-timer" at various factory or other low-paying, fairly mindless jobs. I know just as you do probably, the people we saw here - the numbing drudgery of their lives, the monotony, the colorless conversations. That these "non-actors" could play these roles (which probably mirrored their own real-life existences) is just evidence to me that acting isn't really a hard thing to do. The story? Very uncomplicated - how is that ground-breaking? There was no murder mystery - just...a murder. Done by someone who never tried to cover their tracks and was promptly charged by the physical evidence she left behind.

I get perplexed when everyday-life, genuine, simple things are put on the screen and the reaction is amazement. The dialogue here was mind-numbingly dull - and, to be fair, quite accurate of these types of people in these situations. I've been in those lunch rooms. Listening to a conversation of, "So...how you doing?"...(pause)..."OK I guess" is not ground-breaking, no matter how 'genuine' the portrayal is. I've known all these characters; they are very commonplace. The overly-helpful person who gives out nurturing and perhaps dearly wishes some of it would be returned, the teenage dropout with no motivation, seeing their life unfolding as decades of mind-numbingly dull work and a personal life devoid of anything but beer and pot. The "player" who comes in and disrupts the status quo. OK, accurately portrayed to be sure, but....so? All I'm saying is that evidence abounds in films like this one and other examples ("Clerks", "Napolean Dynamite", "Blair Witch") that acting need not be hard and making a film is not altogether complicated. What is needed is the desire to work through the project, dedication (which is needed in any big undertaking, whether it be producing a film or finishing a dissertation or building a house) and hard work. And I'm not saying either anybody or everybody could do this. What I am saying is that I'm perplexed how a mundane, dialogue-free, event-free cut-and-dry simple film like this, with very little in the way of story or script, can garner such praise. Maybe the next "ground-breaking" film will be two-hours of uncut and unedited footage from a convenience store security camera. Brilliant!!

What a great idea for a short series; have the "best" horror-film directors do their own shorties - unencumbered by "corporate/studio" strings, and watch the creative juices flow. What has been the actual case, however, is that most episodes have been ho-hum, with no new themes, and embarrassingly un-scary. In fact, the opening montage/music on too many of these episodes has been the scariest part of the show! Putting aside "scary" however, there have been some entertaining episodes as well. Here's my personal opinions on every episode so far: Incident on and off a Mountain Road - the series opener. Nice scenery but very un-scary and dreadfully unrealistic. A woman trained by her survivalist husband uses Rambo-like skills to escape a near-supernatural lunatic. Her traps/devices would take an engineer a hour to work out, and she is doing this in seconds while on the run. Yeah, right. Also...in a true horror film, aren't the BAD GUYS supposed to win? Dreams in the Witch House - anyone who loves horror adores the works of H.P. Lovecraft, and I have to give this episode props for the story. Unfortunately (and this is one of the BIGGEST drawbacks of any horror film) sometimes things that are very scary on paper, where the mind is free to endless imagining, become very SILLY when they are translated into visuals on the screen. Case in point: one evil rat with a human face. Silly. "Guy Bonus" on this episode with the very striking female lead giving us her "visual all." This was a good story, though and while not scary was at least entertaining.

Dance of the Dead - should have been called "Portrait of the Annoying". I never got the point of this - some airborne acid-rain kills most of the population and leaves only extremely annoying hoodlums to roam. Morbid entertainment includes corpses brought to "life" to dance for a hugely annoying audience.

Jenifer - this was a good episode...not really scary but creepy and wow, face aside the Jenifer actress was H-O-T (she did play, after all, a seductress) and once again gave us her "visual all." Nice.

Chocolate - guy starts to live life through a woman's eyes, becomes obsessed, culminating in a oh-so-predictable ending. Once again, the nudity (another hottie playing an artist's model) outshined the plot. Eh.

Deer Woman - this episode is downright FUNNY. I actually really liked this one as I'm a Brian Ben-Ben fan. He was hilarious as was the supporting actor. Again playing on the ever popular "female-seductress-witch-thing-kills-men" theme (which this time showcased the ample assets of the female protagonist, i.e. Deer Woman). The actors made this highly entertaining but again, NOT scary.

Cigarette Burns - now THIS is what a Masters of Horror should be! This was a dark, dark episode with lots of raw and very graphic violence all supporting the theme of "the thing that should not be seen/heard/touched/owned" (which is a classic premise). Stealing amply from "The Ring" (another "thing that should not be seen" premise) this was maybe not original but was very, very good. Genuinely creepy, good performances. Kudos to John Carpenter (who made the under-achieving but VERY good film "Prince of Darkness"). This one was T-E-N-S-E and very good.

So I'll watch the rest - even though only we've only had one truly scary episode (Cigarette) we've had, IMHO, 4 "good" episodes (Witch House, Jenifer, Deer Woman, Cigarette). Two episodes were abysmally poor (Dance, Chocolate) and one was....eh (Incident). Happily, the MoH lot has been free-flowing and unabashed with the nudity (leading to the predicable "Masters of Whore" label) for those of us liberal enough to admit to enjoying seeing the fine, female form. Looking forward to McNaughton's episode as "Henry" was a very good film.

My wife hated this movie coming out of the theatre, but I rather liked it. However, hours later I was convinced that I, too, rather disliked this film. The premise of the movie is simple - a small-town diner employee (Tom Stall) thwarts a robbery/rape attempt by two armed bandits. His ability to disarm and kill both bandits is rather "too good to be" for someone not specifically trained in the art of killing. Of course, the news coverage reaches some dangerous characters from the Philly syndicate who call him "Joey" and insist he was a high-level syndicate member, brother of crime-boss Ritchie (played by John Hurt). The mob guys keep visiting, insisting that he is "Joey" (which he vehemently denies) and menacing the family until a final confrontation in his front yard where he again disarms and kills said mob members. Now his own wife is somehow convinced (seeing him in action) that he IS "Joey" which he readily (and mysteriously) confesses, all of a sudden. Now she feels she lived a lie, hates him for it, etc. All of a sudden, ANOTHER set of mob dudes (his brother, Ritchie's, crew) says he needs to come to Philly to see his bro. Well, the two bros aren't exactly "brotherly" and in fact Ritchie means to kill the person we now know was, in fact, Joey. Another confrontation ensues and let's just say Joey is VERY good at killing people. He returns home from Philly to a very shocked but still-together family. And here the movie ends.

Well...what to say? This movie is supposed to be big on character development/study (read: SLOW). Slow it is, with plenty-o-sappy moments establishing the stereotypical small town and Tom/Joey's small-town family life. However, said "development" is very, as I said, stereotypical - no deeper or more real than any other of the movies that attempt such a feat. In fact, everything about this movie is pretty run of the mill - the mob guys come, menace the family in the same way mob guys have done in many other films (e.g. showing up at the mall where mom/daughter are shopping...daughter goes out of sight, mom panics and finds her with mob guy...he's being all nice but still gives the old "veiled threat" speech). The character of the family is hard to develop due to seriously bad acting by BOTH the children (teenage boy and kindergarten-age girl). The wife begins to actually believe Tom IS "Joey" based on...nothing, really - the word of a mobster menacing your family?! Then there's Tom/Joey's "confession" to his wife that indeed he did have a secret past. Why confess??? There are so many other ways he could have gone to explain his deftness at warfare (he was in the military, for example...other "stories" at which someone hiding their identity would have well developed). Then, finally, the scenes where he is forced to dispatch his attackers are virtually undeveloped, short, and non-suspenseful.

So while I was kind of enjoying the movie, the payoff never came. The acting was sub-par by many of the characters (excluding Vigo M. and John Hurt), the characters themselves acted unrealistically (which is not good for a movie whose main claim to fame is character development) and the whole secret-identity/mob menacing aspect was nothing new. Thus, I too was disappointed by the film, while my wife simply hated it.

Just in case anyone is tempted to rent the DVD and spend 2 hours watching this inexplicably highly-acclaimed movie? Do yourself a favor and rent "Heat" again! I like Michael Mann movies...I heard a lot of good buzz about this one. None of the buzz is warranted. I think critics get all agog whenever a comedian does a serious role or something, or maybe Foxx is just riding a wave, but in any case everything about this movie is disappointing. Disappointing, boring, implausible - these are deserving terms for this movie. It's not "junk", it's just...everything I just said.

First, the acting is NOT that great. The single scene where Foxx has to re-retrieve the memory chip is notably good. Besides that there's no material here for an actor to display his/her chops. The very PREMISE falls so many times - the cabbie not simply running off from the start, the ending that is SO GIVEN AWAY by Foxx's first fare, the cops not arresting/detaining the two upon being stopped after the first hit, the fact that Cruise's character doesn't simply kill Foxx off once the latter destroys his entire briefcase. All insanely unbelievable.

But...assuming that you can "suspend disbelief" for all of this, just to wait for the payoff ending? Nothing! Cruise's character is this remarkably efficient assassin throughout - deadly accuracy, ability to focus on his target in chaos (the club scene near the end) - all that goes down the tubes as he guns for the last victim (Foxx's initial fare). I mean, one chick in an otherwise empty building ELUDES him?!?! WTF! And then in the very end, Cruise gets a heart, or loses heart, or..something! And he spouts that cheesy line from the beginning of the film and....expires. Doesn't even die, just expires.

And the viewer looks at his watch and realizes two hours have passed with nothing to show for it. Not even worth water-cooler talk.