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An error has ocurred. Please try againThese are the movies I never get tired of watching. It is very much a work in progress.
Reviews
Avatar (2009)
Stale story, cardboard characters, new high-water mark for visual effects
My wife dragged me to this movie, and it was exactly what I expected.
First of all, the visual effects are spectacular. This movie should win awards for visual effects, no question. However, given the budget and amount of time spent on this movie, this is what I would have expected. A new high-water mark for CGI special effects.
The story is pretty stale as others have said; it's not a bad idea but it's been done to death.
My real problem with this movie is the characters. They're all so cardboard and lifeless. Let's see:
- Grizzled shoot first and ask questions later military guy that only cares about "results" and blowing stuff up. Check. And he squints and grits his teeth all the time, just in case you don't get it.
- No-nonsense sciency type that gives it to you straight and plays by her own rules. Underneath the rough exterior of course, she really cares. Aww. Check.
- Slimy company man that cares more about golf than genocide. Check.
- Hard to get female lead with attitude, complete with talk-to-the-hand scenes, who just happens to be the daughter of the chief. Check.
- And of course, the down on his luck hero, who defies all the odds and comes out on top.
I would contrast this with either of the first two Alien movies, which had many of these stereotypes but did them so much better. You laughed with them and cared about them, unlike this movie.
While the visual effects were awesome, the actual visual design is totally weak. It looks like it was all designed by a 12 year old. Why the hell does the forest glow in the dark? To wow the audience, and that's it. As for the Navi, they're blue native Americans. They didn't even try.
This movie is not revolutionary. Earlier on I thought that the ENTIRE movie was CGI, and they were working on hyper-realistic humans. THAT would have been something. This, not so much.
In the Dark (2004)
Not as bad as people say
You would think it would be easy to make a move set in an insane asylum scary, but for some reason movie makers have had trouble with this. Dark Asylum was horrible, Session 9 was pretty good, and this movie is somewhere in the middle.
This movie borrows very heavily from Blair Witch, but that doesn't automatically make it bad. It's a legitimate way to make a scary movie on a low budget, and budgets don't get much lower than this.
I don't have a problem with the acting; the problem is most of the characters are very generic, and some of the writing is awful ("You're not my friend anymore!"). Also this movie is set in the 80's for some inexplicable reason which makes it all the more cheesy.
Just forget about the plot... it doesn't make any sense, the "twist" ending is rendered completely ineffective by the inability of the writers to make us give a crap about what's going on.
The main thing that this movie does well is provide some creepy shots. Again, they use the Blair Witch idea of home movie cameras and throws in security camera footage to pretty good effect.
This would be a decent student movie, but if you're expecting the competence that normally comes with "real" movie you will be disappointed.
Ong-Bak (2003)
Tony Jaa is for real, but this movie is just OK
Imagine you and your buddies are in high school, and one of your friends is Tony Jaa, and you want to make a little movie to show off Tony's awesome talents, like that ninja guy you see on youtube. Then imagine that the Thai government gives you a couple of million dollars to do it professionally. That's how this movie comes off.
The plot and characters are pretty forgettable. I guess if you know nothing about Buddhism or Thailand you might get something out of it, I don't know. The real reason to watch this movie of course is for Tony Jaa. And don't worry, you won't miss anything. Every time Tony does something cool, which is often, you get to see it two or three times in slow motion. I didn't mind it here because this is my introduction to Jaa, but now that he's got a few movies under his belt he should probably cut back on that stuff.
The fight choreography was a mixed bag, IMO. There was a lot of pausing between moves, which made it seem a bit old-fashioned. The opponents were pretty uninspired too; I don't think much thought went into them.
It's exciting to see a talented young martial arts performer like Jaa come along, but for anyone who thinks Jackie Chan (who Jaa borrows heavily from) or Jet Li have something to worry about, you're dead wrong... at least for now. I look forward to the next one.
Sasquatch Hunters (2005)
Above average for the genre
After watching several sasquatch specials on cable, we set out in search of a good sasquatch movie. I considered the Lance Henricksen movie, but after reading how horrible it is, I decided to give this movie a try.
This movie is about a pair of researchers and their assistant going out in the woods in search of a possible north American ape. They take some unwitting park rangers along with them for guidance. Pretty soon they find what they are looking for, and more, of course.
This movie is actually pretty decent for the genre. The movie tried to take a somewhat scientific approach to the material that, while still outlandish, I appreciated; I think bigfoot junkies would as well. The writers did a better then average job of making personable (if formulaic) characters with pretty good dialogue. There were plenty of roll-your-eyes moments, but there were also some genuinely witty ones as well. They even threw in some pretty good eye candy in the form of Lou (short for Louise, apparently) played by Juliana Dever.
The weakest point of the movie is the special effects. Most of the creature shots are computer-generated. This mainly consists of close-up, quick chaotic type shots that work OK, and a few clearer shots of the whole creature doing something that are not so good. I think this is a trend low-budget movies will continue to follow but I think in this case at least they might have been better served with at least some man-in-a-suit effects instead.
Something else that's a little puzzling about this movie is the R rating. If it weren't for some totally unnecessary F-bombs, this could have easily been PG-13 or even PG.
Overall, above average for movies of this type.