Change Your Image
NatalieBarnes
Reviews
Dredd (2012)
What Dredd was supposed to be
I'll admit, I'm a comics geek. So perhaps that biases my review. But this is so the Judge Dredd we wanted to see. It's far more violent than the trailer let on -- think Robocop 2 in intense, garish 3-D. It's faithful to the comic and Karl Urban is perfect as Dredd. He's a man, not a superhero, totally committed to what he believes. Olivia Thirlby is good as Anderson, as is the rest of the cast. Nice to see some bad ass, but realistic, female characters for a change. Its not a cheap movie, but not a $100 million budget either, so the limited location gets well-used. I was engaged in the story and haven't had so much fun watching people's bodies get shredded with projectiles since The Wild Bunch. You wouldn't know there was creative infighting on the set between director and writer because the film is seamless. Wonderful use of slo-mo too. If only Rob Scheider had bought the farm in Dredd '95 in such living color! I'm so ready for the sequel. Hopefully it will break out and make bank this weekend.
Stealing Las Vegas (2012)
Mostly Awful ... with one bit of genius
There are two movies here. The OK one that Eric Roberts is in. And the AWFUL one with everybody else. Unfortunately, Roberts isn't in much of the movie and is given very little to do, unless you include watching strippers. Not talk to them. Just watch them. Everybody else just kinds of stands around in this picture. I don't know if its a case of bad directing or bad actors (both?), since Roberts is good. And Huggy Bear from Starsky and Hutch shows up now and again. I think he'd much rather be in the OK movie with Roberts, but his role makes NO sense. One minute Huggy Bear is a clean-cut casino boss; the next moment he looks like a pimp running an underground fight club! WTF? I like B-movies but this is an F-movie. Nobody acts like a real person. The robbery is lame. The cast politically correct. The filmmakers even try to pull on your heartstrings with an autistic boy. And once the actors started ACTING IN SLO-MOTION during a pivotal scene, I hurt myself laughing. Not even Corky St. Clair from Waiting for Guffman could have come up with something so amazingly incorrect. While the overall movie stinks; that bit is the work of insane genius.