Reviews

Flat

Not much of anything except incongruent behavior, a flacid depiction of three lobotomized brothers in a journey of unknown purpose.

Stingy

Being filmed in India has no other purpose than giving a colorful background to a setup that could have very well come up from a traveling guide.

Insipid

Was this a comedy, a drama, a film-noir? None, few laughs and most of them when the three brothers curse of lose a poisonous snake. No depth for a drama, no edge for film-noir.

If you find rewarding spending 1:30 hours watching glossy-mag spiritual journey kind of advice with three characters 90% of the film in a fake zonked-out state, this film will fill you with joy, curry style.

Gore, immolation, close-range execution style shooting and allegoric abortions are some of the nicely rendered - in full detail - scenes in this movie that despise all the shocking effort, ends up disappointing as a story, fable or what the heck, a movie script.

If something is to be salvage from this film, is the desire to shock as much as possible, for the sake of shocking, nothing else.

Watching the film was boring, predictable and always exaggerated to the level of ridiculous in a confusing delusion between reality, imagination, perversion and stupidity that combined offers a nice gory experience for the easily amused and shock-craving lowbrow audience.

The hype about this film steams from no other place than the realistic killing and schizophrenic mentality of each one of the characters, which, after all, reflect in good faith the current mentality of the masses dealing with a crumbling, unbearable reality seeking a fantastic escape without consequences.

No Pan can show the labyrinth's exit of this movie monstrosity.

Considering Mr. Freeman one of the best actors ever, I did not think twice about getting this film out of the rental store's shelf.

What a surprise.

The movie is incredible, the actors are so real, everybody shines with realism, so uplifting, god, this is a movie to be placed right next to all the classics.

No, wait, I am thinking about another Morgan Freeman's movie... because anything else he has made has a merit, even the Pawnbroker.

Not this waste. Guilty by association is that exactly. Morgan Freeman just gave the name to this junk but the actual film is an insult to anything artistic, intelligent or constructive.

The only thing this miserable film can do for Mr. Freeman is to corroborate that his undisputed talent is stronger than the worse waste of film strip known to modern times.

Just saw the film and it was a very well executed narrative of a snapshot of pre-Columbian native life and struggle in Mezoamerica, nothing else. Although dealing with a population of rather scant complexity, Mr. Giibson is able to give a meaningful depth to the characters, without loosing the primitivism of their life. I liked that, it cut off any romanticism or imposed modernism for sake of cinematic embellishment.

The plot is simple, predictable and in times tedious, but the abundance of gore, rainforest persecutions and wild attacks (by animals and warriors alike) keeps the film at good pace. The script is very tight, fast and well executed, leaving no loose ends and even a very interesting mixing of events at the end.

I heard many things about the propensity of Mr. Gibson to expose the viewer to grotesque trauma shots with microscopic detail. Such device offers, in this environment, story and times, a unique appeal that will not be repulsive (as in the Passion of the Christ) because here, both enemy and victim belong to the same circle of life, death, survival and dominion, carefully balanced by the director and masterfully played by the actors.

Highly recommended if you are interested in seeing the primitive aspect of beings without antiseptic story-telling.

First mistake of this film was marketing (after all, it's all about marketing) Billing it as a thriller/action movie with some paranormal slant was wrong. This is strictly a psychological drama with zero paranormal stuff in it.

Second mistake was to make reality too real and not idealized or artistic to stay away of the touchy issues addressed: Race, police prejudice, social differences.

So if you went to the movie theater or the rental place to watch a thrilling action film staying right on the surface of entertainment and shock value, you will be disappointed. This is a nicely acted, well constructed and most importantly, realistic drama in which a white woman blames the kidnap of her son as a carjack conducted by an African-American male.

As far as I am concern, there was no stereotyping, just realism. There was no siding on the moralistic virtues of one or other side. Actually, this is a quite profound exploration of the reasons to lie, the be racist, to fear prejudice and to resist the fact that a social interaction between poor and rich, white and black, civilian and policemen will probably be fair in a near future… not now.

My only concern was to see Ms. Moore so stressed during 90% of the film, quite impressive performance. Just hope she doesn't take this as her type-cast.

This is like putting your socks after your shoes. It looks stupid, defies the purpose and wastes your time.

Well, this movie is like that sock, but with holes.

A millionaire without scrupulous (sight!) is selling tickets to travel back in time to the cretaceous and "hunt" a t-rex.

Excuse me, if we human in the future were able to create such a machine, would it be used for such an idiotic purpose? Are you telling me that poor white trash was able to survive and now they are the new millionaires willing to pay for this? And if we can travel back in time, we could also do it to the future, that would have a lot more economical benefits, instead we are going to pretend killing an animal that will be dead anyway? Please! People.

The plot makes no sense, the actors are irrelevant and the CGI is like 1990's quality. This can be bad considering the movie is 75% CGI.

I don't even want to think what projects got pushed out to give place to this aberration.

Films that deal with grief, especially of a parent, tend to go a little bit heavy to the gut, and they are supposed to, since as I assume you are aware, their purpose is to convey the de-facto message: Live goes on.

And this is not exception. The message is the same, the location different.

An Unfinished Life takes advantage of signature acting of its main characters (Redford = rugged but kind, Freeman = Wise but cripple, Lopez = Slutty but righteous) and carries a predictable, non-challenging plot about a father loosing his son in an accident and having problems forgiving those involved in it.

As any good mourning movie, it has the usual confrontation between the suffering and the culprit, the talking at the grave, the frozen in time dead son room, the help-me-get-thru-this drinking, everything. So you may ask how they could make this movie a little bit more original…

With a bear, of course.

Bringing a refreshing balance to the film and distracting you from seeing the actors doing their thing like in auto-pilot, the bear takes over the roll of being the metaphorical incarnation of the real meaning of forgiveness, for all of them, and that, my friend, makes this movie worth watching.

The magnificence of this beautiful animal and its role as a device for forgiveness are two details that transform this otherwise flat drama into a refreshing alternative to sappy grieving films.

I like being open-minded when choosing entertainment and perhaps that was the only reason why I rented this film. I have no connection with either Jews or the holocaust or even Mr. Woods so that may have caused to watch the movie unrelated with the rather boring sequence of events in the adventure of Jonathan, a collector of unknown age that goes to east Europe to trace his grandfather's history.

With all the ingredients, narrative and elements of a comedy, the movie takes a sharp turn into the dramatic, horrifying and daunting aspects of the holocaust, expressed by the personal experiences of all the characters, except for the crazy dog providing the comic relief to this tragic story, which, in my experience, brings some heaviness to otherwise lightweight quasi-funny, stereotype-based comedy.

If you can relate with the main topics, fine, I guess you will find the movie entertaining, if not, like in my case, it becomes tiresome and overbearing, specially when the beginning and premise where completely different.

A snapshot of one day, perhaps the last day in the life of the main character, Lost is the story of a young banker that finds himself trying to escape the desert's unnamed roads and reach his highly needed destination in time. Of course, having to go from point A to point B through the arid land has a slightly more illicit goal than just sight-seeing Nevada, and early in the movie we see why this is the case and who and how he got involved in that adventure.

If nothing else, setting the movie the first 30 minutes does help to expect more from this adventure, and we are even willing to forgo or "understand" why from now on every other close-up frame of Mr. Stanton (Dean Cain) is him talking on the cell phone and driving. I have seen other comments here comparing the movie to Phonebooth (2002) which I find irresponsible and ill-dignifying of the later, unless is all right to compare movies by the simplest coincidence, in the case here, that two males are talking on telephones.

But beyond that, this is nothing but the Saturday morning cable-TV filler film that demands nothing from you and takes you as co-pilot with the hero (anti-hero? not so) seeing here, seeing there for so long, that its outcome is more than expected, even though you wished all along something else could have happened.

I must agree with other comments calling it boring, but what troubled me more was all the missed opportunities to go one step deeper and reveal, in parallel with the allegory of being lost in the desert, the inner struggle of the character for his actions, to whom he is impacting and how to deal with the results. The chances where there, but they were always "Lost".

Following the life of 3 couples and one single woman, back and forth, the film delivers a collection of individual frames poorly mended together by a superficial story that will not actuate the final punch, that at the end could have saved the movie from feeling just as an exercise of depleting the good acting skills of the cast.

Pseudo-gay husbands, self-righteous partners, menopause, envy, unfitness for wealth and many other issues that spice (or sour) relationships are treated in the movie with mittens in a desire way too obvious to refrain judgment but snicks some morality that would be somewhat accepted if only it would not be so superficial.

If the ultimate purpose of the director was to create a catalog of possible vices or virtues that couples can have in order to succeed or fail as a couple, so the spectators can catalyze their own issues and talked them openly in private, the movie works. Any other perspective will hardly meet the expectations.

Consummated, exquisite and utterly hardcore, Innocent Voices is the kind of movie that imprints those two or three masterfully created scenes on your unconscious that, after you leave the theater, next week, next year… forever, you are reminded that you have it easy and you should be grateful for that.

Although this movie is base directly on a war in an specific place and time, it never becomes a documentary, not even a commentary about such conflict, instead, goes above the good and evil, the right and wrong, life and death and – to the credit of the director, Mr. Mandoki – the film mirrors an 11 year-old boy's recognition of reality and his ways to deal with it.

Relentless. The moment you put your ass down in the movie theater, (after the 45 minutes of previews and ads, of course) the film would not let you go, the grip is so strong that your guts are numb and you can swear you are witnessing this war as if you where on the same branch of a tree with Chava eating mangoes.

War is an ugly thing. Shameful for our species and disgraceful to eternity when adults forget the value of life. This is the real beauty of the film, how Nature's pull toward life –so evident in our childhood - will always be stronger than the alienated, corrupted and psychopathic ways of grownups.

I am happy to be alive. Thanks Innocent Voices.

The first time I started to watch this movie was after drinking two beers pretending they would be enough to send my stressful day at work into the past and help me indulge in the simple pleasures of idleness.

I couldn't understand anything of the first 20 minutes and falling sleep won the match. I didn't take this loosely the next day, first of all I speak Spanish and the language was not an issue, secondly, if two beers are making me so incompetent, AA in my area will be my next google search.

So I decided to give the movie (and me) a new chance the next night. This time, though, no beer, volume all the way up and the intention of conquering a task with the eagerness that can come only from being defeated at it beforehand.

Nope, still no good. This time I say the whole thing and I must say, this is the Iraq war of movies: A complete mess without justification.

On purpose I will leave aside the cinematic details so I don't sound like a wannabe connoisseur (MS Word corrected this word, BTW) or a reviewer with some clout, I am just a disgruntle customer exposed to this almost comic levels of ineptness portrayed as a Drama film.

Well, the single merit of this thing is that it has more scenes of people lying on beds than a porn movie (but in this case, they are not doing anything, just there… and still there…. There….forever). Secondly, actors don't do anything (again); they are just Argentinean mannequins whispering some absurd words in an environment that makes no sense with a plot that seems to have been written on the back of the check that founded this idea of a film.

The trite recipe of inserting some shocking scenes on the film so they carry the chore of making the rest of the movie worth something, again, fails. The director shows almost a sadistic delight on keeping the camera 6 inches away from the unanimated character, thinking that this is enough to portray a study of human something (sickness, emotions, whatever because we never know at the end) and give a social commentary of something even more groped by intellectualoids: Religion and Sex. The time goes by and nothing happens, nothing is concluded. This idleness is way better than the one I was expecting from my two beers the day before, but this is not fun, this is a waste.

Blockbuster now remembers me as "the crazy dude that wanted a refund for a bad movie he rented". Well, yes, I returned this movie, made a scene and got my $4.86 back. Is not possible that rubbish like this gets distributed and God forbids, other project got rejected or delayed. I know is not a fair world, but this is testing the limits.

I will always support foreign movies, especially from Latin America, but something I can't support is to perpetuate mediocrity by implying that because the movie was produced in Argentina or that the director is a woman, or that the theme is so controversial, it can get away by overlooking quality, coherence or merit.

The good news is that my drinking is not a health issue (yet). This movie is awful, drunk or sober.

Psychological films should have a stronger twist, otherwise, they fall in the shallow/simplistic category and therefore, they are not regarded as important showcases of human emotion.

This film, about a person trapped in some emotion/trauma issues, will never deliver that emotional punch, instead, will carry on the same topic for ever and after the plot becomes life-threatening, you don't care, because many things are missing all along; the outcome becomes insignificant.

In a race to know who's going to figure out the movie first: Mr. Evans or your. he gambles with your ability to discover little clues all along the first 35 minutes and figure out the whole thing. If you are not able to do your job, then the movie can become entertaining, because, he makes sure you get the last flat-out obvious clue at the end and you walk out happy out of the film, not filling like a loser.

On the other hand, if you can get the whole point right away, the film will do nothing to challenge your abilities and instead, will become a dull parade of trite interactions.

Test yourself.

As a docu-drama with a name not making any justice to the real point of the film, The Assassination of R.N. is no more than a perfect setup for Penn to exercise character development, which, refreshingly enough, had very interesting and sophisticated outcomes.

A well told story, the film moves smoothly around the theme of somebody becoming bitter by been awaken from the American Dream by discovering that only the liar and the conformist can get ahead in life. By adorning clichés with Penn's dramatics, the movie won't give too much space to unexpected turns or twists in the plot (even the same script will flash back to get the obvious stated and out of the way on the first ten minutes) but it manages to keep your interest and has good rhythm.

In my case, what I found most valuable in this film was how the characters were transformed into symbolic representations of what furthers or stalls a regular person's pursuit of happiness and how, at the end the non-literal and non-related is always more efficient in marking somebody's fate.

Dramas about dysfunctional families have always the aim on provide interesting, inspiring and eloquent arguments about love, loss, relationships and conflict. Imaginary Heroes, though, cannot interest you, inspire you or give you any argument about anything.

The weight of not deciding who's the main character, the central point or the gravity in the story sinks the film into a tedious parade of shallow snapshots of a family dealing with grief and 18 years old secrets.

In my case I found specially annoying the fact that each one of this snippets showcasing what dysfunctional family means, will go on and on but never conclude, always will fell short at making the point, and the whole film is built based on this formula that works the first 30 minutes, but after that, it starts forcing your brain to shield this flaccid discourse on family drama by getting bored and reducing more and more you attention spam. After two hours you don't even remember where all this started from, so the films helps you out, going to the beginning again, deeming pointless having to witness all the unrelated stuff in the center.

Get a lot of pop-corn or find a seat where you can play with your cell phone during the movie if you have to endure it, otherwise it will make you very, very disappointed.

A movie very well ping-pointed to an specific segment, the Hispanic bilingual segment, to be precise, delivers what is expected to deliver from basing the dynamics and arguments from a soap-opera kind of recipe.

A beautiful mother, poor, and abandoned by the husband, is left with a daughter and a beautiful set of moral values almost as gorgeous as her physical attributes. She decides to cross the border to start a new life with the daughter, who's narrating the story with special emphasis in skipping the details.

Without subtitles when they speak Spanish (or English, depending which side is easier for you) the movie goes on and on as a sequence of lectures in moral and ethics sprinkled with some jokes (one or two actually funny) paying attention to little interactions but never delving into more serious or profound aspects of, just to mention a few, immigration, exploitation, mother-daughter pride, cultural collision and cultural differences expressing emotions.

As an story, it is chopped and rushed, without conclusion and always leaving issues, either on purpose or by limitation, not finished, forcing the spectator to conclude the movie as he/she pleases which, in my case, dissolved the opportunity to connect and understand the motivations of the characters for their acts and decisions.

Although refreshing in the fact of not stereotyping either side of the border, a movie that overall, is not an eye-opener, intellectual exercise of even a funny comedy, just another input into the massive amount of option for entertainment.

Besides some really nice shots of the Mediterranean sea from the Italian cost, this movie has no other merit deserving praise. It is a docu-drama of a woman being treated as crazy because is not following the social and marital rules of this tribe-like communality; not an ordinary theme for an script, nor the first time it has been done, but, in this movie, the story goes nowhere. Also is stuffed with scenes and passages that bring nothing but distraction and discontinuity to the story and by doing that, the director wastes time instead of letting us know the why and how of things that should be important to make this movie rational, for example... why is she like that?, where is that village?, why does she treat her children like lovers?. Why the hell do they have hundreds of dogs in a concrete pit?

Incredible chaotic and pointless even for Italian films standards.

Western days where simple, they had nature, sincerity, fairness, struggle and redemption. They also had doctors instead of lawyers; therefore, justice was not a money-making activity, but a matter of life or death, and that exactly is what this Film is about.

Since the beginning you can tell the film was made with respect and admiration to the nature, the culture, the men and women and to justice. The story is beautifully simple, the acting, simply perfect, and that is way difficult when you have two starring actors 80% of the time together.

Although the movie is loyal to the classical western plot (I'm not messing with anybody - somebody mess with me - Confrontation - Justice is made), it doesn't have any cliché, overdone scenes, unnecessary gore or over-sizing of the villain so the hero looks more brave. Rather, it is a movie with the rare quality of inviting you to `understand' everybody, theirs circumstances, how things worked those days (and maybe how they should be today), at the same time it keeps you expecting an ending that, by the way, is one of the best in westerns.

A word of warning with the already famous shootout: Don't think you are going to see extras falling on air mattresses from a cardboard-made balcony; this is very real, a must if Mr. Costner planned to maintain the authenticity showed in every single moment of this marvelous and poetic Western.

Go see it as you would go to see art in a museum, because that's exactly what this movie is.

Because for more than 2 hours I was subjected to one of the most irrational, naïve and inept attempts of filmmaking by someone that should be making DARE documentaries for High Schools.

A `who cares' plot, no message, no depth in the characters, flat editing, unnecessary political statements and cheap use of emotional tricks (like having Ground Zero as background in a 10 minutes scene when two of the main character's friends gossip about irrelevant matters) grant to this quasi-film, a -don't waste your time- rate.

The only actor that could have saved the film if his face is in 80% of it is Philip Seymour Hoffman (as Professor Elinsky), because, as usual, his supporting roll was well acted, being the only character with credibility, the rest of the cast were only emotionless machines vocalizing synthetic and ridiculous lines

Although these ingredients doomed this movie to being just plain mediocre, what confirms its lack of art and creativity, is the tasteless, vulgar and unfair parade of violent stereotyping, a ventriloquism act ranted by Mr. Monty Brogan (Norton) in the bathroom, reflecting the anger and scorn Mr. Lee has for New York (and for everything else, seems like)

A reflex reaction when the credits rolled was to rush my finger into the DVD player's eject button, that would give you an idea of how enjoyable the ending was.

Do you remember being a child and playing with your friends and then you will come up with the desperate idea of making one of the toys fly to by ahead of the game by saying `This G.I. Joe is flyiiing.!!!' and then when your chums will disagree with you the reaction is even more desperate: `Yes It can fly, look it has wings or whatever.'.

This is exactly what you will see in this movie, one desperate attempt after another for stuffing the movie into the money-making frame in which you are not supposed to ask `how that could happened', `why should I believe this' and `I better put my brain in idle an let Hollywood teach me what a real hero is, for just $10 the ticket.'

You will love the feast of clichés so much, that you will feel disgusted that in 2003 you are still getting entertained for such flat and idiotic films. The romance in moments of rush, the CIA big flat screens on the wall, little texts telling you where things are happening. The whole nine yards.

The acting, well, you don't have to put a lot of effort into portraying a young man returning from severe amnesia (and 2 bullet wounds) like is recovering from a binge with the frat brothers the night before. Also, this hero doesn't have to worry about anything, he gets money out of nowhere, meets a beautiful lady as sidekick (with a perfect car for the chasing scenes in Paris' streets) when is time to flee, Has forgotten everything but knowing how to kill with a Bic pen exactly when the bad guys want to eliminate him. Yes, he is an assessing with a lot of good luck.

Is an action movie with unoriginal action, is a thriller without suspense and it is a romance without randomness.

Saying that this movie is a `little Gem' or `One of the best foreign movies of the year' exemplifies the catastrophic impact of evaluating a film as good just because of patriotism, being a debuting director or because Is coming from a non film-as-business country. Mediocrity has no justification, because you can always do it better.

But the intent of commenting a film, after all, is to state what it awakes in us, what it makes us feel, and for me, made me afraid that foreign movies couldn't do better than this today.

Basically the movie is 5 scenes. In normal standards this could have made the point in less than 12 minutes, but here, it takes more than 2 hours, so you can imagine how much unnecessary material you'll see, including 5 references to going to take a leak (Which by the way the front cover of the DVD is Zaza and father in the bathroom, very weird)

Don't expect to know the characters, that won't happen, and even worst, you'll get p***ed off to see that the only character that could make sense and save the movie is left out the first 5 minutes (The sister's husband, taking a bath like a baby).

Another ***ser, there are points in the movie, and if you have seen it you'll agree with me, that you will say: `Hooo, now it makes sense, here it is where this movie is going. ` (For example using witchcraft to keep Zaza in love with divorcee) and the next thing you'll know is that you were wrong, the movie is still going nowhere.

So, bases on this, I don't think that makes any sense to start analyzing the roles, interactions, performances and technical details, just be aware that you will see a rehearsal and maybe a well intentioned effort to put in perspective the obvious about marriage-based cultures plagued with the clichés that a fat ugly woman has to be a mother, men pick young women up like selecting cattle and sons not married at 31 are seen like freaks.