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Yonzie
Reviews
Mr. Wrong (1996)
Good acting, bad script
My girlfriend told me to tape this from TV and I had no idea what it was about. Initially I was pleasantly surprised by seeing Bill Pullman in a lead role. The last movie I saw featuring him was "While You Were Sleeping" which I thought was great.
Mr. Wrong starts out reasonably good, but fairly quickly the stupidness becomes too much. Ultimately, it is made bearable by good acting from Degeneres and Pullman and a lot of funny moments. The moments in-between was unfortunately not just boring or neutral but plainly painful. This is obvious from the start when Martha Alstons (Degeneres) secretary brays on about receiving flowers from her boyfriend on valentine's day and Martha returns it in a totally non-funny way. I guess it could have been funny, but it was just painful to watch. Repeat ad nauseum with some genuinely funny moments in-between and you have this movie. In conclusion, its watchable and good for a few laughs, but if there's something more interesting available, just steer clear.
Appurushîdo (2004)
Very beautiful, but just... wrong.
Is it Beautiful? Yes. Is it nicely made? Very. Does it work? No, at least not for me...
Have you seen Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within? If you have, then you know what this movie looks like, even down to the bad motion capture of the characters in the beginning. In addition, the artists had some trouble getting to grips with which parts of a given scene should be visible/clear, and which parts should be blurred (due to the relative distance from the "camera"), which was extremely annoying for the first 15 minutes - almost like wearing only one contact lens. An obvious difference from the Final Fantasy movie is the characters, which are cell-shaded. Breaking new ground, they are still 100% 3D though, right down to the hair.
The new medium also makes it a challenge for the creators to have the characters' facial expressions display the proper emotion and the proper "amount" (if I can use that expression) of it. As with the motion capture, it gets better as the film progresses. It is still far far behind conventional animation techniques though.
Having read the manga, and another review here stating that it adhered nicely to the books, I was very disappointed to find that not to be true - *at all*. It is clearly *loosely* based on the manga, but very twisted... One could imagine this movie as a few episodes of an anime series, stitched seamlessly together by some crackpot US licensor trying to sell a movie instead of a series.
Stranded (2001)
I was sick, the gf rented me this...
She shouldn't have... Really.
The plot itself is quite OK, if a bit on the light side. What makes this movie bad is the pacing and the actors. Even at 90 minutes, it seems very long. This may be because some of the actors (Maria Lídon and Danel Aser especially) speak EXTREMELY slowly without the slightest hint of emotion whatsoever. I recall Gallo saying (SPOILER) that only two people would be able to survive until help could be there, and Lídon asked "Only two people can survive?!?" (still without emotion) (END SPOILER)... She sounded just as blonde as she is. The crud that came out of Aser's mouth was horrendous as well... Since the movie is returned, I can't verify this, but it seemed to me that we were told at the start that they had been under way to Mars for 296 days (or there about), but later we are told that it takes 26 months... eh?
In short: unless you like slow movies with nice landscape pictures, stay clear of this. 4/10